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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 






TALKS TO STUDENTS 

ON THE ART OF 

STUDY 



FRANK CRAMER 

Author of the "Method of Darwin: a Study 
IN Scientific Method" 






SAN FRANCISCO 

THE HOFFMAN-EDWARDS COMPANY 

1902 



LBiOlS 



THr LiBRARY OF 
CON (^R ESS, 

"vo COPtta Reosived 

AUG. 25 1902 

CnPVPIOHT ENTRY 

Cl.«-S8 (X^ XXc. No 

5 ^ T « S 

COPY 3. 



J 



Copyright, 1902 



Frank Cramer 



PRINTED BY THE STANLEY-TAYLOR COMPANY 
SAN FRANCISCO 



TO MY FATHER-IN-LAW 

ROBERT SAMSON THOMAS 

WHOSE OLD AGE IS 

CROWNED WITH A RECORD 

OF NOBLE LIVING 



./ 



PREFACE. 

Anyone who is rash enough to add one more to the 
hundred thousand books and pamphlets that have already 
been written on the general subject of education ought, 
perhaps, to give a somewhat elaborate justification for 
his act. This book must make its own defense for exist- 
ence. If it does not make good the intention of its 
author it will go promptly to its long home' where most 
of the others already are. 

The book is not intended to fill the place of a manual 
of logic or psychology or pedagogy. There is already a 
surfeit of such books. It is intended to furnish effective 
suggestion to the student who is passing through the 
critical period of his intellectual life, while the mental 
powers are plastic but on the point of setting. The 
writer believes that with helpful suggestion, youth can 
in a measure be its own instructor in the matter of the 
right training of its powers. The first essential to this 
end is that it shall see clearly what is wanted. 

When the writer was a child, the Indian boys used to 
come into his native village on pleasant winter days to 
shoot pennies that idle white men put up on hitching 
posts for them. Those young Indians nearly always got 



vi THE ART OF STUDY 

the pennies; but not merely because they had good bows 
and arrows^ but because they made such accurate study 
of their weapons and of distances. When an arrow 
missed its mark, it became a subject of discussion and ex- 
planation. And there is no doubt that every failure was 
forced to teach a lesson. It was the careful study of the 
weapons and conditions that made the shooting accurate, 
and caused even the little lads to become so quickly skill- 
ful. 

Skill comes quickly only by attention to the method 
in which the thing is done; and the highest kind of skill 
in anything is never attained by heedless repetition. I 
have faith that the student, at least in the later years of 
the secondary school and the first year in college can un- 
derstand the necessary explanations of his own mental ac- 
tivity. And when once his attention is fixed upon it, he 
can see, perhaps better than his teacher, the most glaring 
defects in his methods of study.. 

The book has been written entirely from the student's 
point of view; and therefore no attention whatever has 
been given to courses of study or modes of presentation, 
subjects which depend exclusively on the teacher and 
are discussed in the formal pedagogical treatises. There 
are doubtless dry places in it. When the reader reaches 
them he may avoid the desert and tarry not nor stay 
his feet until he is on the other side. But if curiosity 
overcomes the repulsion, he may find that even a desert 
can teach something to a good thinker. If this book does 
not meet the requirements, someone will yet write one 



PREFACE vi 

that will answer the purpose. The only thing I feel very 
sure about is that there is need of such a book. 

Whatever claims may be set up for the contents of 
the book, there can be no serious claim to originality. 
Many of the ideas are as old as Aristotle and have been 
handed on from writer to writer. Nearly everything in 
it is common property. Help has been drawn from 
many sources and among those whose work has been 
drawn upon I need to mention especially Bagehot, Bain, 
Harris, Herbart, Huxley, William James, Jevons, Kay, 
Locke, and Spencer. I have to acknowledge especial in- 
debtedness to James' Principles of Psychology and Jev- 
ons' Principles of Science. Ordinarily, in a systematic 
work, direct quotation and references to sources are 
strictly in order; but the writer has sought to simplify 
the character of the discussions by avoiding both, and it 
is hoped that the above acknowledgments will meet fully 
the requirements of both justice and good taste. The 
thanks of the author are due to Mr. John C. Kirtland, 
Jr., of Phillips Academy, Exeter, New Hampshire, Miss 
Hattie Lummis of Chicago, and President B. P. Eay- 
mond of Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, 
for many important suggestions. 

FRANK CRAMER. 

June 20, 1902. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 

Chapter Page 

I. The Law of Habit 1 

II. Habit: Friend or Enemy? 11 

III. Interest 23 

IV. Simple and Compound Interest . . . . 30 
V. Attention 40 

VI. Effect of Mental Alertness on Scholarship . 56 

VII. Observation 63 

VIII, Growth of the Power of Observation . . 72 

IX, Discrimination 84 

X. Association : Illustrations 96 

XI. Association: the Original Order of Experience 108 

XII. Association According to Similarity . 116 

XIII. Association : Some Practical Applications . 121 

XIV. Classification 136 

XV. Memory 153 

XVI. A Good Memory Depends on Good Thinking 166 

XVII. Reasoning : Illustrations 183 

XVIII. Reasoning: a Larger Problem .... 196 

XIX. Reasoning : How the Mind Struggles after a Truth 204 
XX. Reasoning : Its Progress Depends on Recognition 

of Similarities ....... 212 

XXI. Some Further Conditions of Sound Reasoning . 224 

XXII. Reflection .237 



THE ART OF STUDY 



Chapter 

XXIII. The Impulsive and the Vascillating Will 

XXIV The Agony of Starting . . . . 

XXV The Petrified Will: Habitual Mastery 

XXVI. The Feelings 

XXVII. Science Culture and Feeling 

XXVIII. Ideals 

XXIX. Some Elements of Character 

XXX. Conclusion 



Page 

243 
252 

258 
272 
279 
287 
294 
305 



TALKS TO STUDENTS ON THE 
ART OF STUDY 

CHAPTEE I. 

THE LAW OF HABIT. 

A pendulum made of a marble and a piece of string, 
if let alone, hangs still and straight. If the marble bob 
is struck, the pendulum swings to and fro across the 
point from which it was started by the initial stroke. 
But even under such compulsion it beats across the 
vertical in ever diminishing curves. After a period of 
rhythmic motion, if let alone, it comes to rest, in its old 
position of stable equilibrium. Force can move it away, 
but it always comes back to the starting point. 

In other cases the opposite is true. As soon as a 
disturbance is started all of nature^s forces conspire to 
increase the effect and prevent a return to the old con- 
dition. Putty is powdered chalk well mixed with linseed 
oil, and is carefully stored in bladders to keep it from 
drying out. It is in an unstable condition. It can be 
used but once. It is kept plastic until it can be applied, 
but when it is put to use, it undergoes the single fate- 
ful change, and its career of usefulness depends upon 



2 THE ART OF STUDY 

the permanence of the change. When soft it is plastic 
enough to be molded; and when dry it is rigid enough 
to keep its shape. When a thing is in unstable equilib- 
rium, disturbance starts a change that is never again 
undone. 

A chopper strides through the snow to the foot of 
a big pine tree, that seems to pierce the sky. It has 
been so true to the light above, it is so straight, that he 
can drop it where he will. He must make it fall where 
it can be most easily reached by the skidding teams. 
With an easy cunning born of experience he cuts a little 
lower on one side of the tree than on the other, and 
chops last on the higher side. The tree is indifferent; 
it can fall anywhere. But when the work is done there 
is a dainty quiver of its million needles; it seems to 
stand with majestic poise — a giant about to die. The 
chopper puts the last few strokes just where they are 
needed, and with a crack, a rush, and a crash, the tree 
falls where he intended it should. Stately in its upright- 
ness, it needed but an inch or two of over-weight on one 
side; thenceforward it was doomed to move in a single 
way. The slightest, nicely gauged initial push decided 
the fate of a giant which a little while before might have 
been pulled the other way by a child with a silken cord. 

An unstable thing is set, as it were, with a hair- 
trigger attachment, and a relatively slight amount of 
force applied, lets loose the vastly greater latent force 
of the thing itself. It may be so nicely balanced that 
it seems to poise and quiver, as if in search of the true 



THE LAW OF HABIT 3 

direction. But after a little, initial, decisive push, the 
nature of the thing itself transforms this gentle inclina- 
tion into a hundred-handed force that locks and seals 
the fate of the thing beyond repair, and it lies at last, 
with its power expended and its destiny fixed. 

A new coat sleeve has no inclinations. It has be- 
come adapted to no arm. In the ordinary sense, it may 
fit a hundred different men; but in the truer, deeper 
sense, of having hecome adjusted, it fits ro arm whatever. 
But let the coat be worn. The arm within the sleeve 
furnishes a constant force that bends and straightens it. 
Wrinkles begin to show, and become more and more pro- 
nounced. The sleeve, at first indifferent in the matter 
of wrinkles, was capable of being impressed with any set. 
But once that particular arm begins to live in the sleeve, 
that particular set of wrinkles is inevitable. Their ar- 
rangement is determined by a rigid mechanical law. 

The sleeve has taken on a habit. Of numberless 
possibilities, one has been realized, and at the same time 
all the others have been excluded. The sleeve has 
yielded to force, and its structure has been modified. 
It has a character now. And so with a boot. Neither 
will ever really fit another arm or foot after it is once 
"well-broken." 

The smooth-skinned face and smooth-pressed coat 
belong in the same class. Neither appeals to the artist 
as a subject for study, because neither reveals anything. 
Character is written in wrinkles. They are the hand- 
writing of force, the record of work done. Character 



4 THE ART OF STUDY 

itself is the final shape taken by material that was once 
indifferent^ plastic, capable of being molded into any 
form. It is that one of many possibilities which has 
been realized. 

What is true of putty and the pine tree and the boot 
and the coat sleeve, is true of the human brain and mind. 
Their destiny, within certain limits, is determined by the 
forces that are brought to bear upon them. Acts which 
at first seemed no more easy or inevitable than their op- 
posites, come in time to represent the only possible course 
of action. Human character is the product of two sets 
of forces: the constitution or tendencies that are inher- 
ited, and the particular habits that are acquired by con- 
tact with life's surroundings. Habits may be looked 
upon as the statute laws of the individual life growing 
out of the inherited constitution. No one is responsible 
for the constitutional traits that he has inherited, but 
within reasonable limits he is personally and solely re- 
sponsible for the physical, mental, and moral habits that 
mark out and distinguish his personality from that of 
other men. ^ 

If I could invent a good, strong, new word to sup- 
plant the word habit, I would do it gladly, in self-de- 
fense; because the law of habit is so striking, and so 
fundamental in the development of every human life, 
that it has been made the theme of myriads of sermons, 
lectures and school essays. One who undertakes to say 
anything about it, is forced to face the revulsion that 
has been produced by constant harping and endless repe- 



THE LAW OF HABIT 5 

tition. But the very reasons that have made it a thread- 
bare subject, make it important that the student should 
consider it seriously and at the very outset of his intel- 
lectual development. The law of habit, which is the very 
law of our being, is what makes life easy; without it 
existence would not only be intolerable, but impossible. 
Its general significance from the student's point of view 
cannot be over-emphasized; and it may be made one of 
the most attractive subjects of thought in connection 
with -the general problem of education which the student 
is trying to solve. 

Our lives are almost entirely composed of routine 
acts — ^acts indefinitely repeated with the return of the 
days and nights. But every act that is subject to repeti- 
tion becomes subject to the law of habit; so that our 
lives are really made up of performances governed by this 
inexorable law. That is why we repeat and repeat the 
trite old saying, Man is a bundle of habits. Now the 
student is in the act of making such a bundle; and what 
its nature and value will be, depends on the considera- 
tion that he gives to the fundamental law of habit that 
shall by and by govern him with an iron hand. 

In simple words, the law of habit is the tendency to 
repeat an act of any kind in the same way more easily 
and with less attention at every successive repetition. 
However difficult an act or succession of acts may be at 
first, repetition reduces the difficulty. Ease of perform- 
ance increases and the amount of attention given to the 
act grows less and less. When an act has become a habit, 



6 THE ART OF STUDY 

the performance is reduced to its last and mechanical 
stage. The work is performed without conscious assist- 
ance or guidance of the mind. Skill arises from giving 
attention to the details of the performance until per- 
fection is reached in both accuracy and speed. 

Most men trust their lives entirely to the law of habit, 
without purposeful interference to determine what the 
particular habits shall be. But the student's power as 
an intellectual unit will depend on his ability to map out 
lines of action and train himself to perform these things 
regularly and accurately under the most helpful law of 
his being, the law of habit. The amount of action that 
he can safely trust to habit will determine the amount 
of mental vigor that he will have left to bestow on things 
that are new, that come up only once, that are not mat- 
ters of routine. The law of habit alone makes possible 
the "economy of mental eifort" without which there can 
be no intellectual progress. 

Habit feeds us, guides us over the ground, sees to it 
that our duties are done, without our giving it, the mas- 
ter of our lives, a single thought. It lightens our labors, 
it insinuates itself into a mastery over our every act, it 
dooms us to an easy slavery — a slavery welcome because 
it relieves us so largely from the necessity of active 
thought and decision. We are so completely under the 
control of the law of habit that the mind is left free to 
fall asleep or busy itself about new and unusual things, 
and the process by which we slide from strenuous effort 
in the performance of an act into spontaneous perform- 



THE LAW OF HABIT 7 

ance of the same act is so natural, so carefully provided 
for in the nature of our organism, that it is the one ap- 
parently irresistible, inexorable, masterful law of our 
being. 

Most habits are formed along the lines of conduct 
that gratifies our immediate wants and desires. Our im- 
mediate impulses control our acts, and habit makes these 
acts the faithful attendants of our feelings. All bad hab- 
its are formed along the lines of least resistance. They 
are the ruts where the ungoverned and untrained feelings 
ran. Habits formed in pursuit of some distant result are 
almost all good. They are formed deliberately; they are 
voluntary habits. The student, if he expects to govern 
his career, must do what the scientific experimenter does. 
He must interfere. The latter, when he makes an experi- 
ment, creates his own conditions, decides what arrange- 
ments will give him the desired results, and prevents sur- 
rounding circumstances from interfering with his plans. 
If the student makes a study of the law of habit with 
this end in view, it will be neither dry nor threadbare, 
but a big and vital subject of perennial interest. 

It is not my purpose here to enter upon a discus- 
sion of the nature of habit or to trace even in outline 
the relations between mind and brain. That belongs to 
psychology and to a later stage of the student's work. I 
shall at most consider only a few of the practical bear- 
ings of the law of habit on the problem of education from 
the student's own point of view. 



8 THE ART OF STUDY 

Humanity's observations on Habit are not all hope- 
lessly buried in sermons and lectures and essays. They 
are crystallized into the oldest and commonest proverbs 
of the race. Now humanity learned most of the truths 
by which it is guided away from destruction and into 
success, long before it could give the reasons for them. 
Men have long been able to judge of a day's weather from 
the character of the sunrise, without being able to tell 
why a certain kind of sunrise was a pledge of rainy 
weather. Such knowledge is empirical; but it serves the 
practical purpose and is likely to find expression in a 
short and pithy proverb. So of observations on the law 
of habit. Men did not know why action becomes easy 
and then inevitable by much repetition; and we do not 
know overmuch about it now. But they did recognize 
the facts, and coined such wisdom as the following. 
"You cannot teach an old dog new tricks" ; "as the twig 
is bent, so the tree will be inclined." "Train up a child 
in the way he should go : and when he is old, he will not 
depart from it." 

If we had never heard anything about the law of 
habit, these proverbs would be very striking to us, be- 
cause they all by precept and figure of speech seek to 
drive home the same great fact, that with habit as with 
wheat, there is a seedtime and a harvest. The one truth 
they tell is that the formation of habits is restricted to 
youth, and that thereafter forever they lead their help- 
less, mumbling slave where he does not will to go. 

Habit has been called the memory of the spinal cord. 



THE LAW OF HABIT 9 

The rational explanation that is given for the law of 
habit is that the nervous system is the responsible party. 
The brain and spinal cord are plastic enough to receive 
impressions and rigid enough to retain them. They are 
at the outset in an unstable, indifferent condition. They 
may be impressed with any set of habits; but every phy- 
sical and mental act leaves an effect on the material of 
the nervous system. What was once capable of receiv- 
ing any impression, has now been branded with a par- 
ticular one. As the little impetus that removed all the 
possibilities of the falling pine except one, gave the fate- 
ful bent, so the first impressions on the nerve material 
decide what shall become a habit when those materials 
^'seV' in their permanent, "stable" form. Brain and 
cord, like other unstable things, receive the impression, 
the record, they do the work, during the process of 
change from the early, unstable to the later, stable con- 
dition. 

Hence the fact, that has always been so impressive 
to men, that there is change and progress in the forma- 
tion of habits only during the early history of the indi- 
vidual. As soon as an act has been once performed, "lines 
of least resistance" are established. Its repetition is easier 
because the nervous system is ready now to do that kind 
of work. After continued repetition of the same kind of 
act, it is no longer possible to act differently without 
tremendous effort. Like the putty, the brain and cord 
have "set" in the forms impressed upon them in their 
plastic state. The comparative ease of doing, and the 



10 THE ART OF STUDY 

infinite difficulty of undoing, result from this remarkable 
quality of the human organism. 

When once the nervous system has received the early 
impressions and has assumed some of the burdens of the 
mind, so that it does easily and without conscious effort 
of the individual, many things which at first required 
great effort, the ordinary processes of nutrition keep the 
nerve tissue in that changed and fixed state. The nor- 
mal process of renewing the wasted tissue preserves the 
record, keeps brain and cord in the structure they as- 
sumed when first the habits were formed. In course of 
time all changes cease. The nervous system, and with 
it the individual habits, become fixed. 



HABIT: FRIEND OR ENEMY 11 



CHAPTER 11. 
habit: friend or enemy? 

Tihe enormous significance of the power of habit 
is never fully realized. Habit is, in a sense, the taking 
of a particular direction. When once it has been en- 
tered upon, the human individual is no longer a mere pos- 
sibilit}^, that may be realized in any one of a thousand 
different ways. One of the possible ways has been se- 
lected, only one result can now be realized; and that 
result can no more be undone than the yesterdays can be 
recalled. But none of us is deeply impressed with this 
fatal truth. We recognize and acknowledge the real 
power of habit only when it "sports" with us or others. 
When the mind lets go its supervision, habit leads its sub- 
ject into ridiculous situations. Then we are startled 
into a realization that we have a real and merciless mas- 
ter and that we are slaves. 

Every reader can recall from his own experience, in- 
stances in which inadvertently the mind failed to make 
connection, at the proper time, with bodily actions that 
were going on without attention under the strong force 
of habit; and the ridiculous situations thus created. It 
is these instances that serve best to show what habit 
means to the individual life. The writer once knew a 



12 THE ART OF STUDY 

gentleman who had a habit of changing his clothes after 
caring for his horse. One day he retired to his room, as 
usual; but he was in a hopeless ^l3rown study/^ ISTow 
the great virtue of habit is that it does its work thor- 
oughly. All that is needed is the initial impulse; the 
"memory of the spinal cord''' will do the rest. He took 
off his coat, and while he was thinking about something 
else, habit completed the peeling process and put him 
to bed in broad daylight. 

When once the attention is completely withdrawn, 
and the mind does not recover the thread of control at 
the proper moment either because it is preoccupied or 
because it is incapacitated from doing so, habit follows 
its purblind course and puts us in a predicament. 

In one of the large coast cities of the United States, 
a policeman, early one morning, found a Swedish sailor 
clinging to the wing of an angel surmounting the column 
of a fountain. The sailor's song was rudely interrupted, 
and later he made an explanation in the police court. He 
said, "I and another sailor man drank some alcohol. Ay 
tank I see de ship." The judge appreciated the point 
and dismissed the case. Habit had caught the intellect 
in a dazed condition, and on its own responsibility had 
taken the physical part of the sailor to the top of the 
monument and had encouraged him to take a reef in the 
bronze wing of the angel. When habit sports thus with 
the dignity of our lives, its strength receives a temporary 
recognition, and we see ourselves as helpless as little 
children in the clutches of its hundred heavy hands. 



HABIT: FRIEND OR ENEMY 13 

Thoreau tells of having seen on a freight train, hides 
that had been shipped to Boston from the South Ameri- 
can pampas. His poetic eyes saw that their tails were 
still sticking up defiantly as when their owners ran like 
mad across the grassy plains. He took occasion to re- 
mark that if he once knew a man's disposition he wonld 
look for no change in it this side the grave. 

This view of habit seems to have nothing inspiring 
in it. Not even the will seems to be taken much into 
account when once the law of habit has mastered the 
chief interests of life. But it is well for us that human 
lives move round in rigid orbits, ruled by the law of habit. 
If there were no means provided in our organism for 
making acts more easy to perform with repetition, there 
could be no skill, no progress. It would be as hard for a 
man to put on his coat at forty years of age as it was at 
the age of four or five. Even the rudiments of music 
would be beyond our reach. We could not dream of, 
much less carry out, the rapid, complex motions by which 
music is produced. 

The race would perish off the earth without help 
from the law of habit. There are so many possible ways 
of doing things, that, if there were no motive of any sort 
for repeating them in the same way, there could be no 
continuity of action. And if repetition did not cause 
the formation of a habit and increase the ease of perform- 
ance, every act would be and remain a matter of such ex- 
treme difficulty that it would be neither pleasant nor 
profitable. 



14 THE ART OF STUDY 

The force of habit is what makes expectation possi- 
ble. It produces uniformity of action on the part of 
each individual, so that others are able to anticipate what 
he is likely to do. Our friends have been trustworthy, 
and we believe that they will remain so. If a man lies 
once, we think he will do it again. These things are 
true because the law of habit, which underlies our con- 
duct, forever tends to produce uniformity of action. Our 
judgment of every man is based on the firm conviction 
that he will always act in the same way. This continued 
performance of acts in a uniform way gives him an indi- 
vidual character. It marks him out and distinguishes 
him for all observers. 

National character, too, that remarkable thing that 
seems so striking to the young student of history, is 
merely a bundle of universal habits. A well-established 
nation has its own peculiar views of life, and ways of 
eating, drinking, working and amusing itself. These 
practices have arisen slowly, and by imitation have come 
to characterize every individual. And people of differ- 
ent ages reflect the effects of national habit as clearly 
as an individual reveals at different times of his life, the 
increasing power of habit over his doings. 

Children, transported from their native land, adopt 
by imitation the national habits of their adopted country. 
Ancestral habit has only a minor effect on them. They 
may, on growing up, still harbor a desire to return to the 
land of their nativity. But the all-pervading law of 
habit has unfitted them for residence there. They fail 



HABIT: FRIEND OR ENEMY 15 

to feel at home where there are habits unlike their own. 

A mature man retains for life the habits of his na- 
tive land and early childhood. He remains a stranger to 
many things in his adopted country, because the old 
national habits cling to him; he can no longer adjust 
himself to the new ones. In America, where there are 
so many foreigners, it is extremely interesting to the 
student of the law of habit, to compare those who came 
from Europe as adults, with their descendants of the 
first and second generations. The former retain the an- 
cestral habits; and the latter have discarded them, they 
are a new type, because they have new habits; and they 
have new habits because they were subjected to the new 
conditions during life's plastic period. 

The law of habit is what makes accumulation of 
power possible. It preserves what has been gained and 
sets the mental and physical forces free to work on a 
higher plane. If an act did not become easier with repe- 
tition, the results of that act would be lost as soon as it 
was performed. The best product of a boy's first effort 
to make a bow and arrow is not that bow and arrow, but 
the permanent effect it has on his powers. His first bow 
and arrow are very poor products, perhaps so poor that 
they are practically useless. But he is a better mechanic. 
His judgment in the selection of wood and his skill in 
cutting are better, and these remain with him, while the 
bow and arrow may go into the fire. His next perform- 
ance is based upon this new skill ; and it in turn contrib- 
utes toward his permanent power. While the law of 



16 THE ART OF STUDY 

habit dooms ns to live out our lives along the lines in 
vrhich they are cast in youth, this same law makes our 
action along those lines constantly more effective through 
the accumulation of power. Our knowledge, like our 
physical acts, becomes mechanical. If the law of habit 
did not take charge of the multiplication table and reduce 
our knowledge of it to the "mechanical stage/^ we could 
never make progress in numbers. 

So both action and knowledge are committed to the 
keeping of the law of habit, with the result that the con- 
scious powers of the mind are left permanently free to 
deal with new questions. The mind can use all that has 
been gained, without the necessity of reproducing it pain- 
fully when it is wanted again. On the old foundation of 
action and knowledge that have become mechanical, on 
the modified nervous structure, rest our skill and the pos- 
sibility of progress. Over these dead but solid acquisi- 
tions, the powers of the mind rise to higher thought and 
action. 

The student's attitude toward this all-powerful law 
of habit needs to be clearly conceived and carefully at- 
tended to. It is his most powerful friend only while he 
remains master of the situation. While it preserves what 
has been gained and enables the mind to work on ever 
higher levels, it may put the mind to sleep entirely. The 
action of intellect and will are only spasmodic in the aver- 
age man, because he has become a creature of habit. A 
new kind of act or a new idea startles him, and he repels 
it. He no longer has a growin.g point. The student, 



HABIT: FRIEND OR ENEMY 17 

while lie acciimnlates, under the law of habit, a strong 
and hesiYj body of wood in the trunk of knowledge, must 
keep the terminal bud of intellectual action alive and 
healthy and directed upward. The one thing that he has 
most of all to dread is that this bud will wither. When 
it is dead, the intellectual tree may long remain green, 
but growth is over with. 

The history of both men and nations reveals the 
steadying eifect of habit, and also its deadening effect. 
Very few people are convinced or converted by argument. 
Most men believe what has been believed and do as their 
fathers did. Those periods are rare in the history of 
humanity, when some great idea has worked its way into 
the minds of men and overthrown the views of the past. 
But even when such a change has come, it is never thor- 
oughly done by argument upon adults who were trained 
in the older views. The change is completely worked out 
only in the younger generation, which adopts the new 
views while mind and body are fresh. The older views 
shrivel and die, mostly because those who held them pass 
off the stage of power. One of the most striking in- 
stances of this truth is the history of the principles that 
Darwin promulgated. Some of his strongest supporters, 
and he himself, felt that his views must make progress, 
not so much by remodelling the opinions of older men, 
as by capturing the young mind of the world. And it was 
so. Not by argument, but by training, is the world 
slowly moving from its old to its new moorings ; and there 
it is held again by the conservative force of habit. 



18 THE ART OF STUDY 

A bookful of illustrations might be written to show 
that the adoption of one way of thinking, one line of ac- 
tion, one direction of growth, tends to shut out the pos- 
sibility of development in any other direction. There can 
be but little hope of radical change after the individuality 
is once fixed. A habit and its results, either in a person 
or a nation, do not fall, like the walls of Jericho, at the 
blast of trumpets. The will may in most matters be 
normally strong, but habit, by its very nature, tends to 
destroy the authority of will. A change of habit requires 
not only a change of mind, but of body as well. It calls 
for a complete re-organization of the nervous matter of 
the brain and spinal cord. 

When once wrinkles are formed in a coat sleeve it 
will always yield along the lines of the old grooves and 
ridges, even though a new arm be thrust into it. It is no 
longer a question of forming a set of wrinkles; they are 
there and must be ousted. A new arm in the sleeve may 
force modification, but it cannot drive out of existence 
the old lines of weakness. 

Sometimes the pettiest examples illustrate well the su- 
preme difficulty of change in either loiowledge or a course 
of action or of growth. One of my students, in learning 
the names of the German alphabet, got the pronuncia- 
tion of four or five of them wrong. He wanted to cor- 
rect the mistakes from the outset, but no amount of criti- 
cism had any apparent effect. Finally he set himself to 
work with tremendous energy and succeeded. But it cost 
him at least four or five times as much energy to undo 



HABIT: FRIEND OR ENEMY 19 

those few errors as it had originally cost him to learn the 
whole alphabet. 

This principle has a well nigh universal application. 
Linnaeus made great contributions to both knowledge and 
method in the field of science; and his doctrines carried 
great authority with them. His classification of plants 
was fully adopted in England and Germany, but not so 
enthusiastically in France. Where then would the nat- 
ural classification, which ran counter to the Linnaean 
classification, be most likely to be worked out and most 
surely take root? In France. England and Germany 
were very much slower in accepting the natural classifica- 
tion because it conflicted with beliefs and modes of 
thought already current. Wherever a belief or a mode of 
thought has once been fully adopted, a new one is always 
most vigorously resisted. As Bagehot said: "The great- 
est pain of the human race is the pain of a new idea." 

The geological history of the pig tribe furnishes ex- 
amples of the same principle, that when once modification 
has started in some particular direction, it is practically 
impossible to wheel about, undo the results and start 
again along other lines. At many points in the history 
of the pig tribe, ambitious off-shoots underwent special 
modifications and became adapted to special conditions 
and kinds of life. Some of these were swifter and more 
graceful than the typical pig, but when the conditions 
changed in their surroundings, they could no longer adapt 
themselves to a new environment, and they perished from 
the face of the earth. They could make progress only in 



20 THE ART OF STUDY 

the direction in which they had started. The typical pig, 
with its general powers "iinmodified, with its ability to live 
on anything anywhere, under any conditions, has survived, 
with piggish obstinacy, all its more ambitious relatives. 

Plants, as well as animals, reveal this principle. The 
Venus' Fly-Trap, that peculiar, highly-modified, insect- 
catching plant, is a wonderful creation, with astonishing 
adaptations for catching insects. But it is the only spe- 
cies in its genus, is confined to a small area in North 
Carolina, and is surely doomed to perish from the earth. 
Its sister genus of the sundews, which manage to catch 
insects by much simpler means, are not highly modified, 
and are much like common plants, contains three hun- 
dred different species and they are found in all parts of 
the world. 

A high degree of adaptation to one kind of life shuts 
out the possibility of adaptation to any other kind. In 
the conduct of men, long indulgence in error makes a 
right life thereafter a practical impossibility. The brand 
has been burned into the very tissues. The being has 
been changed. When once the mind has been filled with 
unsound knowledge and has been trained in wrong 
methods of thought, it is almost impossible to remodel 
that knowledge and those ways of thinking in the inter- 
ests of truth. 

No human being can busy himself about any kind of 
thing without forming habits of action and thought. 
The law is irresistible. When this force has reached its 
maximum there is nothing left to do, for the vast major- 



HABIT: FRIEND OR ENEMY 21 

ity of men, but to follow the lines already laid down and 
make the best of it, unless along with all the other habits 
has grown strong and tall the habit of self-mastery. If 
the life has been one of mental and moral error, it is not 
very likely to turn into the paths of truth and righteous- 
ness. The most it can do is to stand by the wayside and 
beckon "unmodified" youth into the right path. For 
rare is the spirit that can make the colossal struggle for 
release from these laAvs of physical, mental and moral 
change. The changes must come. Habits of thought 
and action will be formed. It is the business of the stu- 
dent to see to it that he sets himself in the right direc- 
tion, that his habits of study, of thought, of conduct, his 
views of life, are started right. Thenceforth the law of 
habit is his strongest and truest friend. It makes sure 
for him everything that he has struggled for. 

He must see to it that his powers are trained to 
respond to his best desires. The mind that wills to do 
one thing, in a body trained to do another, is a house 
divided against itself. ]^o man ever realizes his ideals; 
and perhaps it is better that his life should not be all 
planned in advance, but should be a perpetual re-adjust- 
ment to new and unforeseen conditions. But success, in 
any situation into which a man may be thrown by circum- 
stances, can never come to one with a divided house. A 
competent mind with a brain and body trained to "come 
to heel,^' cannot be a failure anywhere. A mind and 
body, well trained under the powerful law of habit, makes 
a pure and vigorous and successful life normal and easy. 



22 THE ART OF STUDY 

When the will and the impulses and the force of habit are 
agreed for evil^ the combination makes a successful villain; 
when they are agreed for good, no combination of circum- 
stances can make a man a failure. But when the house 
is divided against itself, the product is no man at all — 
only a thing of disgust. 

What has been said about the law of habit, and the 
irresistible force of habit has been said primarily for the 
purpose of applying it to the question of education from 
the student's own point of view. Success depends on 
the careful co-operation of all the powers in pursuit of 
one clearly defined object. There must be no irrecon- 
cilable elements in the character — will to do one thing 
with habits trained to do another. From this point of 
view education becomes the development of certain hab- 
its. Every chapter in this book, with a little remodelling, 
could be made a subhead under the general subject of 
habit. 



INTEREST 23 



CHAPTER III. 

INTEREST. 

Half a dozen people may be speaking at once close 
to a listener, but he listens only to a single voice. He 
remains oblivions to the others because his attention, 
gnided by his interest, is concentrated on that one. Onr 
mental capacity, our physical powers, are monopolized by 
that which, for some reason or other, is attractive to ns. 
The attraction may be very strong, appealing powerfully 
to the feelings; or it may be a remote attraction, appeal- 
ing only to the intellect. It is not my purpose to enter 
into an analysis of the nature of interest; but only to 
point out some of its practical bearings on the work of 
the student. 

Shall a student pursue only those things that spon- 
taneously interest him? If he must develop interest in 
some things for which he has no inherent liking, what 
kind of interest shall it be ? Shall the burden of exciting 
the student's interest in his work be laid on the teacher's 
shoulders, or shaU the student hold himself responsible 
for the cultivation of genuine interest in all the phases of 
his work? 

The gravest problem that teachers have to deal with 
is that of awakening and sustaining the interest of the 



24 THE ART OF STUDY 

student in his studies. There is less hopeless incapacity 
among scholars than many people think. The high- 
schools lose more students after the first year or two 
because the latter have lost their interest in the work 
than because of incapacity or the grinding necessity of 
working for a living. Without interest in a thing thb 
intellect will not work upon it; interest is the fuel to the 
engine. From the teacher's point of view the student 
himself is the responsible party; without interest on his 
part there can be no such thing as education. 

The reason why it is so hard to teach a young child 
is because its attention cannot be riveted. It has no in- 
terests that last for more than a minute or two. It has 
no thought for its own future hunger; for its clothes or 
its nurture. There is nothing yet permanently fixed in 
its mind, around which its thought and its action revolve. 
It is interested only in what is immediately before it; 
now a rag-doll and then a butterfly; now a flower and 
then a kitten. It does not know how to postpone a pres- 
ent pleasure for a future pleasure or profit. It has no 
organized interests; there is no steady purpose running 
through its life. Its interest and attention are of the 
wandering, impulsive type that flits from object to object 
as each strikes its fancy. 

As it is with the child, so it is largely with the sav- 
age. The future, even the immediate future, is a dim 
and far away thing that has little or no bearing on pres- 
ent conduct. Now in what important intellectual respect 
does the highest type of civilization differ from the men- 



INTEREST 25 

tal attitude of the savage and the child? It may be 
said that the fundamental quality in the complex con- 
ception that we call civilization is the quality of fore- 
sight, providence, exercising thought and energy in the 
present, for some future good. To the civilized man 
the future is a definite thing, to be taken carefully into 
account both for himself and his family. Civilization 
makes it possible to look steadily into the future and 
provide for it. There is no grave daily danger that our 
present efforts to secure some future good will come to 
naught. The conditions of life are so well established 
that we are confident we shall be allowed to reap what 
we have sown. It is this condition of more or less cer- 
tainty concerning the future that makes us willing to 
sacrifice present pleasures for more lasting ones that will 
come only in the future. 

But there arises, hourly, in every mind, the question : 
"Shall I yield to my present impulse, gratify my present 
interest, or sacrifice these and bend my energies to secure 
some better, future good?" The student especially is 
called upon to face squarely this issue; because the very 
nature of his calling makes it necessary to decide whether 
he shall serve his present desires and interests, or make 
present sacrifices in the service of the more remote and 
permanent interests of his life. The very fact that he 
is educating himself would indicate that he is going 
through the process of getting ready for something, that 
all his present labors are intended to yield their results 
many years hence. He is supposed to be sacrificing time 



26 THE ART OF STUDY 

and money and energy now for a later reward. This 
principle needs to be enforced in the details of a stndent^s 
work as well as in the larger outlines of his general pur- 
pose. The problem perpetually recurs: "Is it worth 
while, in this particular case, to sacrifice present pleas- 
ure and comfort to the more remote good?^^ 

It is much easier to preach the doctrine of the sacri- 
fice of present interests in favor of the remote and per- 
manent interests than it is to persuade men of its value 
as a universal principle of action. In recent years there 
has been much discussion of the question of good roads 
in the country. Now good roads were at least as im- 
portant twenty years before the discussion began as they 
are now. But it was the advent of the bicycle that made 
the question a vital one. Bad roads and bicycles do not 
harmonize. When a man has to pedal his own wheel he 
makes a vigorous disturbance to get a good road. He 
wants his labor reduced to a minimum. If a farmer had 
to pull his own wagon it would be to him an invincible 
argument in favor of good roads; because good roads 
would mean the removal of his physical distress. An im- 
mediate, present interest in favor of good roads would be 
developed at once. 

But the problem, as it presents itself to the general 
population, takes the form of alternatives. The farmer 
merely wants to get to town and back. It is easier for 
him to struggle over a bad road, carry a smaller load, 
worry his horses, lose time and vex his temper, than to 
stop and improve the road before driving over it. It is 



INTEREST 27 

cheaper, easier and more to his present interest, to leave 
the road as it is. To improve the road would mean a 
large present sacrifice for a series of comparatively small 
benefits distributed over a long future. In the short run 
it is better to leave things as they are ; but in the long run 
the farmer^s horses and wagons would look better, accom- 
plish more and last longer, and he would be richer and 
happier and would keep in closer touch with civilization 
if he would make the present sacrifice for the future 
good; if he would let his remote interests determine his 
line of action. The important point about all this is that 
the big sacrifice will occur but once, and the benefits will 
be constant and will affect every phase of his life and busi- 
ness. 

It is said that in Africa there are well-beaten trails 
that run as straight as the flight of a crow for hundreds 
of miles through the great forests. But there is hardly 
a rod of such a trail that does not have a little bend in 
it. It turns first to the right and then to the left, as 
if a flying crow had carried a swinging pendulum to mark 
the course of the trail. Even savages know how to travel 
a straight course for a hundred miles, but they cannot 
keep the little curves and zigzags out of the trail. It is 
easier for each individual, on every occasion when he 
comes to a rock or a stump or fallen tree, to go around 
it than to remove it. In the long run it would be profit- 
able to remove the obstacles by combined effort of the 
travellers, and straighten the trail. But on each separate 
occasion that the obstacle ^^arises,^^ it is not worth while. 



28 THE ART OF STUDY 

And that is why a trail that funs straight across the 
country has in it those thousands of little time-killing, 
back-breaking crooks. It requires leadership and a 
strong impression of permanent benefits to make the 
present sacrifice. 

There are other problems of this nature in which 
whole nations are interested. It is a serious thing to 
decide whether a whole people shall make a large sacri- 
fice of present, immediate interests to secure some dis- 
tant permanent good. The English-speaking races use a 
language whose spelling is antiquated and ridiculous. It 
takes an English-speaking child at least a year longer to 
learn to read its mother tongue than it does a German 
child ; because each sound is represented by several differ- 
ent letters or combinations of letters (as in h&au, though, 
doe, no, how), and often the same letter stands for several 
different sounds. Our written language is an ^^asinine 
feast of sow-thistles'' set before our children in their 
tenderest years. 

Historically this crude and curious spelling is inter- 
esting and has a vast significance; but practically it is a 
millstone about the necks of our little ones. This con- 
dition of things is so evidently in violation of the so- 
called practical sense of the Anglo-Saxon race, and such 
a serious crime against the intellectual possibilities of 
that race, that a theorist might suppose the old condition 
of things would not be allowed to continue for a single 
year. 

But it is altogether a question of the relative 



INTEREST 29 

strength of the immediate interests of ourselves and the 
remote interests of our children. If the changes that 
need to be made to simplify our written language were 
only slight, or if large, would cause no serious, even tem- 
porary inconvenience to anyone, the change would be 
made over night. And we would congratulate ourselves 
on our generous foresight for the good of those that are 
yet to come. But the present loss of time and money 
and the amount of energy required to re-adjust ourselves 
to any new spelling would be very great; and the change 
cannot be made, even though the present sacrifice would 
be but a driblet compared with the great gain to the 
coming generations. The remote interests suffer utter 
collapse because the conflicting present interests are 
powerful. 

Now education, in its very nature, is a serious, long- 
drawn-out attempt to sacrifice present convenience and 
success at the altar of the remote and permanent inter- 
ests of human life. It is a deliberate attempt to build a 
good road for future use. And the student who is the 
one primarily interested in this business, has to weigh 
the matter and make his decision in the face of obstacles. 



THE ART OF STUDY 



CHAPTEE lY. 

SIMPLE AND COMPOUND INTEREST. 

In the end, all lines of action become a question of 
forming a habit. As was said in the last chapter, the 
very nature of a student's calling is the best evidence 
that in his case there is to be a determined sacrifice of 
present interests for the purpose of securing the perma- 
nent benefits that can be reaped only in later years. But 
every human being, even a student, tends to lapse into 
the haphazard, hand-to-mouth mode of life in which 
remote interests play at best a subordinate and only sub- 
conscious part. The vital question with the student is: 
shall he habitually act upon impulse, giving thought to 
and securing only immediate pleasant results, or shall he 
act habitually by voluntary effort, with a view to making 
his present acts yield the largest possible rewards in the 
more distant future? 

Since everyone, no matter what his calling, meets 
things in which he takes no interest, which are not attrac- 
tive to him, which may even be distasteful, the student 
must frequently face and answer the question whether 
he will pursue only those things that please him now, or 
whether he will exercise his pugnacity on difficult and dis- 
tasteful things, and forever dispose of them by doing 



SIMPLE AND COMPOUND INTEREST 31 

them, in the accomplishment of his more permanent pur- 
poses. In recent years the courses of study in school and 
college have been so enlarged that each student is sup- 
posed to be able to choose only those things that he can 
take some interest in, that have an inherent attraction 
for him. He can now more easily and thoroughly pre- 
pare himself for the calling he has chosen, because he is 
not obliged to groan and labor over things that only re- 
pel him. But while the modern plan of elective studies 
has given a larger and stronger interest to the work of 
each individual, the fundamental question remains the 
same. Will he dodge or will he fight? There is always 
and everywhere in life a residue of uninteresting matters 
that have to be considered and done, if any kind of 
definite purpose is to be realized. 

If one is merely indifferent to a line of work, a strong 
conviction that it ought to be done for the sake of 
more remote and permanent interests, may lead one to 
do it with a fair degree of mental and physical comfort. 
But things that are repugnant at the outset call for 
something more than an ordinary act of will. When no 
other feeling will impel to action, it is well to have in 
reserve the feeling of anger and to let it blaze out at the 
thought that there is anything in the way of success. If 
one has no interest in doing a difficult or repugnant but 
necessary thing, one can still interest himself by crush- 
ing it because it is a difiiculty, because it challenges the 
fighting qualities. 

I know of no other spirit in which to face that in- 



32 THE ART OF STUDY 

evitable residue of unpleasant work that every student 
meets. "Failure" may as well be branded at the out- 
set on the forehead of him who will do only the work 
that is pleasant to him at the moment he decides to do it. 
He is still the victim of his own impulses^ and cannot 
subdue his intellect and will to the service of a steady and 
useful purpose. He may be a genius, but he is not a man. 

But while one's fighting qualities need to be appealed 
to at many points in a career of study, and one needs to 
keep steadily in mind the great remote end of all the 
work while doing what is now uninteresting, interest in 
the distasteful thing itself begins to grow as the work 
progresses. The doctrine of compound interest applies 
to the student's work as well as to the capitalist's money. 
Herbert Spencer wrote many pages of philosophy to 
show how rapidly effects of every kind are multiplied if 
the force at work is only constant. For purposes of cal- 
culation, the rate of increase at compound interest is 
permanently printed in tabular form. Jesus Christ put 
the doctrine into a sentence: "Whosoever hath, to him 
shall be given; and whosoever hath not, from him shall 
be taken even that which he thinketh that he hath." 

While it is necessary to do many present things by 
sheer force of will, if the permanent interests of life are 
to be faithfully served, no man or woman of spirit needs 
to feel that such labor must remain uninteresting while 
it lasts or leave an unpleasant after-taste in memory. As 
has been said, we are necessarily heedless of most things 
that happen around us ; but in the mind that is quick and 



SIMPLE AND COMPOUND INTEREST 33 

not dead, alert and not asleep, interest will rise from 
work that is apparently most uninteresting; and when 
once that new, immediate interest is born, it is not likely 
to die. 

A friend of the writer had to support himself while 
preparing for entrance into college. This bread and but- 
ter interest was very immediate, pressing and constant. 
It sharpened amazingly his capacity for seeing work that 
needed to be done. One day he saw a dilapidated fence 
and offered to repair it for the owner. The latter did 
not want his fence patched. He wanted a new one. 
'^Can you build me a new fence T' "Yes, sir.^^ And the 
agreement was made. With the young man it was a case 
of pure self-assurance that had been cultivated in the 
hard school of strenuous endeavor. Before that time he 
had no interest in fences. Why should he work at things 
that did not interest him? Fences had never meant 
anything to him except that they were things to climb 
over or crawl through or tear trousers on. 

As long as he had to work anyhow, he might have 
hunted longer, until he found a job that was easy. If 
he had had a mind to follow the ^T.ines of least resist- 
ance,^' he would have avoided the fence. But he was not 
built that way. His mental action was clear. He 
wanted an education; to get that he wanted money; to 
get that he wanted work. He would have had no inter- 
est in fence-building, if the more remote interest of an 
education had not stimulated him. But he had the 
capacity for developing a quick and immediate interest 



34 THE ART OF STUDY 

even in a fence. From that moment every fence taught 
him a lesson. Distances between posts, the number of. 
nails used, the depth of post-holes, all had a lively interest 
for him. Board fence, picket fence, iron fence, rail 
fence each taught him something. Before he knew it 
he was a connoisseur of fences. 

He built a good fence and fairly earned his money. 
But he did something far more important than either. 
He had developed a new interest and a new habit — of 
studying fences. He could no more let a fence alone 
than a dog can let a cat alone. Later he became state 
entomologist for one of our most prosperous states. I do 
not think his knowledge of fences secured him his posi- 
tion; but it was the power of creatmg a new, immediate 
interest in a piece of work undertaken for the sake of his 
more permanent desires, and the power of transforming 
that temporary interest into a new permanent interest 
that has made him so successful in life. 

Students by the thousands choose to prepare them- 
selves for special callings, but are unwilling to sacrifice 
their feelings in making the necessary preparation. 
Would-be doctors dislike chemistry and physiology, and 
study as little of them as possible, and do that little in 
just as poor a fashion as the law allows. Would-be me- 
chanical, civil, and electrical engineers dislike algebra, 
and beg to be excused from it. Would-be lawyers often 
feel a strong distaste for history; and instead of exercis- 
ing their manhood in a little matter of conquest, they 
seek to belittle the importance of the task that lies be- 



SIMPLE AND COMPOUND INTEREST 35 

fore them and avoid it if they can. One must have some 
sort of interest, either temporary or permanent, or he 
will not act at all. Every student is bound to meet, 
sooner or later, tasks that have no immediate interest for 
him; and there is no choice but to master them as they 
come. After a while the spirit of habitual mastery is 
developed, and nothing seems too hard or too repulsive. 
If a student lacks interest in a task he can substitute 
pugnacity for it until an interest is developed; and that 
is bound to follow at the heels of the first success. 

The difficulty that the student has to deal with is, 
that with all of us, the present life is much more vivid 
and real than what is yet far away. Our present desires, 
pleasures, comfort, ease, are much more substantial in 
our eyes than any distant good that can come from pres- 
ent effort. A present sacrifice is easily made by resolu- 
tion; but it is another matter to enforce it. So in the 
execution of a fixed purpose to have an education for 
future use, our present interests, our momentary im- 
pulses, are always interfering with the steady progress 
towards the fulfilment of the distant end. But no man 
ever made a path that was worth anything who kept his 
eyes fixed on his feet or let them wander at random 
from object to object of present interest. 

A hundred men might tramp over a plowed field and 
still fail to make a path. But, if one of them, before he 
started, Jifnew where he w^as going and kept his eye fi:xed 
on the distant object, he would stumble sturdily over 
the clods instead of dodging them and disregard the 



36 THE ART OF STUDY 

dead-furrows instead of trying to follow them for com- 
fort's sake. His track would be only one in a hundred. 
There would still be no path. But his track, though no 
deeper than any other, would show such striking charac- 
teristics that an obserrer could distinguish it at once. 
The strides would be uniform, there would be plain an 
utter disregard of both local difficulties and temptations, 
and the track would be straight. If that man were to 
make another trip, in the same state of mind, all the 
tramping of the ninety-nine would be in vain and dis- 
appear. His track would be the trail, and they all, like 
sheep, would follow. The way-faring man, though a 
fool, would not err therein; and maybe in his lucid mo- 
ments he could understand the reason why the trail ran 
where it did. After the trail was made, he, too, might 
accidentally become aware of the object on which the 
first man's eye had been fixed. 

And so of intellectual results. If the distant, per- 
manent interests are always kept in view, the local and 
present interests are easily and steadily subordinated. 
Not only will the performance be easier, but the very 
first results will show the striking characteristics that 
all labor shows which is intended, not to gratify the im- 
pulses of the moment, but to serve the ends of a life- 
time. Work done in that spirit with such a motive, is 
work whose results are useful afterwards. This, to my 
mind, is the reason why every stroke of a student's work 
should be done with the ultimate end of his labors in 
view. That is the distinguishing characteristic of all 



SIMPLE AND COMPOUND INTEREST 37 

work of any worth that has* ever been done in the world ; 
it is the hallmark of every permanent product of the 
human mind that is valued as a heritage by thinking 
men. 

Work thus done once is ready for habit to fix per- 
manently in the intellectual structure. Knowledge thus 
gained is clear and purposeful, and its impression is 
deeper than that made in random trails of thought. It 
is easier to do the second time, and one is more likely 
to do it again. Intellectual work done under those con- 
ditions has "the right of way." If the main purpose of 
the student's life is kept permanently in view, he learns 
more, learns it better and more rapidly than if he is con- 
stantly consulting his temporary comfort and conven- 
ience. 

Work done in this spirit is the only good material 
for habit to seize upon. If, as in the making of the 
trail, the student promptly repeats his work, either by 
reviewing it or putting it to immediate and regular use, 
it is secure against all the so-called faults of memory. 

To my thinking, two main results are produced by 
education, both of which depend on how the interest of 
the individual is centered, and both of which may be ex- 
pressed in terms of habit. One great outcome of a good 
education is the ability to do a thing correctly and skill- 
fully at the first effort. This is the great good after 
which students consciously or unconsciously strive. And 
if with the development of this power has grown a bound- 
less love of truth, the student has entered within the 



38 THE ART OF STUDY 

sacred gate of a successful intellectual life. But this 
ability is the fruit of long and silent and often painful 
practice. It is the habit of doing intellectual work with 
the final purpose always in view. 

An immortal example of the lasting quality of the 
habit of doing things thoroughly, once for all, is the in- 
tellectual life of Charles Darwin. When, as a young 
man, he made the famous four years' voyage in Her 
Majesty's Ship Beagle, he had, at each stopping place, 
only one opportunity to make scientific observations. If 
he should leave any of his work inaccurate and incom- 
plete, it must remain so forever; for he had no time to 
return in order to make additions and corrections, a 
proceeding that is chronic with most students. So all his 
great powers were bent to the service of his permanent 
interests. He made strenuous and constant effort to 
secure fullness and accuracy of observation in order that 
the reasoning afterwards based on the results might not 
be defective or false. This trait of his mental action 
remained a habit throughout life. It stood him in good 
stead in the long and laborious years of his later scientific 
career. He never had to do a thing twice. 

A second permanent result secured to the good 
student is a large body of valuable knowledge; valuable 
because it is accurate and can be depended upon, easily 
accessible because it has become subject to the law of 
habit. It is so fixed, that when one item recurs to the 
mind, the rest comes trooping back with no apparent 
effort of thought to recall it. It has become mechanical. 



SIMPLE AND COMPOUND INTEREST 39 

Not only the alphabet, the multiplication table, the de- 
clensions and conjugations of foreign languages, but 
every group of facts that belong together can, by prac- 
tice, be subjected to the law of habit and made secure 
against the so-called whims of memory. 

The science of war is compressed into books; but 
the art of war is a matter of nerve-training. The regu- 
lars fight the first battles and hold disaster by the throat 
until the volunteers are ready. The difference between 
them is that with the regulars obedience, endurance and 
courage have become habits. In every emergency they 
can do the right thing at once. They not only know what 
the volunteers know — ^but they have developed a per- 
manent state of mind in regard to that knowledge. So 
with the scholar. The will is re-enforced by a great 
body of accurate knowledge made familiar by constant 
practice. 



40 THE ART OF STUDY 



CHAPTEE Y. 

ATTENTION", 

Attention is the concentration of the mental pow- 
ers npon a single object. All normal human beings are 
capable of exercising it. The student's interest in the 
subject therefore relates not so much to the mere exist- 
ence of the power as to the way in which it is applied. 
The surest test of a highly trained mind is the power of 
perfect and steady concentration of the attention upon a 
single line of thought. The importance of this power 
the student cannot over-estimate. 

ISTow a little child's life is filled with attentiveness. 
But it is not the kind that leads to any kind of accom- 
plishment. A beautiful butterfly attracts it so strongly 
that it forgets all the rest of the world. Its toys and 
its mother's admonition not to wade in the wet grass are 
forgotten in the perfect concentration of its attention. 
But a beautiful flower takes its turn at beckoning to the 
mental powers of the child. Then the flower is dropped 
for something else that is new. The senses are busy, but 
there is no reflection. The attention is not driven to 
anything by the force of the will. The attraction is 
from the outside, and the response to it is always imme- 
diate because there is no internal thought to control it. 



ATTENTION 41 

The trouble with a child's attention is that all the possi- 
bilities of each new object are at once exhausted. There 
is nothing new about it any more. 

Monotony kills attention; and the child has no new 
interest in the thing. Its color, its form, its motion are 
soon observed and then there is nothing left. Nothing 
but thinking, behind the working of the five senses, can 
bring out new views of the old thing; but that is just 
what the young child does not do. It has no permanent 
interest in butterflies or roses, no permanent interests 
of any sort. And attention cannot be steadily held on 
anything, even by the most strenuous act of the will, 
without a motive for such concentration. 

Culture begins with the fixing of the attention upon 
a few definite things by direct and persistent effort of the 
will. And it will be worth while to consider a little the 
conditions under which alone this power can be culti- 
vated. 

Inability to concentrate the attention and keep it 
fixed is the most striking and fateful mark of a weak or 
untrained mind. But there are certain conditions un- 
der which the most highly trained mind' cannot keep the 
attention riveted. Everyone has felt the difficulty of 
keeping the thought and imagination fixed on a single 
object for which search is being made in a uniform mass 
of grass or sand. Extreme weariness soon kills even the 
desire to find the thing. The mind persists in letting go 
and wandering; and it requires tremendous will power to 
make the search a steady and prolonged one. The object 



42 THE ART OF STUDY 

is repeatedly overlooked, simply because the image of it 
cannot be kept clear, and the mind is not at work upon 
it. There is no food for thought. Even though other 
things do not tend to distract the mind by their attrac- 
tiveness, still it cannot fix and hold the attention on any- 
thing that does not stimulate reflection. Attention can- 
not be permanently fixed upon anything without an ac- 
companying train of thought. 

But trains of thought run only where there are 
tracks. The reason why the child's thought does not 
take any definite direction and keep it, is because there 
are no permanent interests in its mind sufficiently well 
established to furnish a track for thought to run upon. 
It is only when, by active thinking, the subject that the 
mind is now attending to, can be made a part of some 
greater subject, can be connected with some larger and 
more permanent interest, that attention can be riveted 
upon it. And the length of time during which interest 
can be kept riveted upon a subject, or the number of 
times it can be brought back to it, will usually depend 
upon the number of ways in which it can be connected 
with other things, that are already known or have been 
already thought about. 

The monotonous thump of an Indian drum, as it 
booms across the moon-lit lake from the pines where 
the bucks are dancing, to the tent where the listener lies 
awake, may attract his attention for only an instant and 
then be neglected as nothing but a dull and stupid sound. 
But if other things are called up by it, if it has meaning 



ATTENTION 43 

for him, it may be weird and beautiful music and awaken 
wonderful trains of thought and feeling. The mind wiU. 
muse on prehistoric man and on the fate of the race; 
wonder whether civilization makes men happier; and 
ever and ever come back to catch anew the heavy, musical 
beat, and then to follow away some other new thought 
into the future or the past. As long as the sound 
awakens thought, it will make the imagination dance its 
beautiful maze across the hard, resounding floor of rea- 
son. But when it ceases to do this, it will no longer be 
attended to. 

There is only one alternative. When once the sound 
has ceased to waken thought, attention may for a time 
be riveted on it by sheer force of will. By the shutting 
out all other objects of thought that are attractive, that 
dull, monotonous sound is given full control, and puts 
both the mind and the man to sleep. The surest way to 
cultivate an attitude of non-attention — of waking sleep or 
actual sleep — is to exclude from the mind all objects 
upon which the imagination can play, and keep the at- 
tention fixed by force of will upon something that will 
not grow, that does not waken the thought. Utter ex- 
haustion, entire withdrawal of the mind — sleep — inter- 
venes. 

Whether the beautiful Minnehaha falls shall rivet 
the attention for only a few minutes or for hours, depends 
on whether the mind sees something new in it or con- 
nected with it, with every passing moment. Attention 
dies of thirst in the mental desert of monotony. Whether 



44 THE ART OF STUDY 

the glint and flash and music of the water shall hold 
the mind fixed upon the beauty of the falls depends on 
whether their charms are kept new and the feelings are 
kept fresh. The water may still be there and its music 
be just as loud, but they will be seen and heard only 
while they are suggestive. As soon as they cease to sug- 
gest new associations the subject will be dropped. The 
continuous sight and sound of Minnehaha, if other sub- 
jects of thought are excluded, will dull the faculties and 
bring on drowsiness. 

The mind may be startled into new activity by 
merely stopping the ears. The sight without the sound 
wakens an entirely new train of thought. The light and 
limpid silence, the beauty without the music, touches and 
wakens hitherto unknown phases of feeling. So, too, 
when the eyes are shut, the sound alone is different from 
what it is when coupled with the sight. It conjures up 
old thoughts and wakens new ones by linking itself with 
other, long-forgotten sounds. 

The scientific side of the subject seems a more som- 
bre topic of attention; but it is even more fruitful in its 
effects. Why is it a falls, and not a rapids? Why 
could we walk under and behind the falls and look out 
through the watery veil? Simple problem with a simple 
solution, if only the mind has grappling hooks with which 
to fasten the attention. 

The solid rock above, the softer rock beneath, the 
rythmic flashes and the musical roar of the falling water, 
the cool, damp shade, the spirit of Minnehaha, bride of 



ATTENTION 45 

Hiawatha, images of swollen waters in the springtime 
and frozen wonders in the winter, and last of all perhaps 
the thought that the beautiful falls is dying for want of 
a steady water-supply, all hold the attention fixed. It 
needs no coercion while the topic grows into manifold 
trains of thought. The will seems indeed to be itself 
coerced to let the mind attend to the expanding thought. 
The little falls may thus grow and change and fasten 
itself to a thousand memories of other times till it has 
become a permanent part of the intellectual life. The 
memory of it remains rich and fruitful, for whenever it 
comes back to mind on the wings of the imagination, it 
brings with it the deepest thoughts and purest feelings of 
the human soul. 

From the student's point of view the effect of the 
will upon attention needs to be kept constantly in view. 
If a subject is not sufficiently interesting to hold the at- 
tention, if it does not awaken thought and so make itself 
attractive, the will must be exercised. For it is the 
student's chief business to so train the attention that it 
can be steadily fixed. If he recognizes clearly the fact 
that, in order to make attention steady and persistent, 
the subject attended to must waken thought, his duty 
lies plain before him. For a short time attention can be 
fixed on an uninteresting thing by force, but hardly for 
more than an instant. There is often recognizable a curi- 
ous, instantaneous effort to develop the object of atten- 
tion — that is, to analyze it, explain it, call up associations 
for it, to assign a place for it in our scheme of knowl- 



46 THE ART OF STUDY 

edge. And this is the point at which the student^s effort 
must be directed in cultivating steady attention. 

He constantly meets things that are not directly 
interesting but that need to be considered at once, for 
the good they will do afterwards. He is therefore under 
the stern necessity of making a practice of concentrating 
his attention by force of will, and as soon as it is fixed, 
of seeking by every means to start trains of thought 
about the subject, to develop it, to make it grow upon 
the mind, so that there will promptly arise a direct inter- 
est in the thing itself. Then the mind pursues the sub- 
ject for what there is in it. 

It has already been pointed out that if the student's 
great purpose is strong and clear, and constantly kept in 
view, it has a profound effect on his present labors. It 
prevents the shiftiness that makes the average life so in- 
effective. This remote interest can never be lost sight 
of without disaster to the student's intellectual growth, 
for it is the anchor of his life. Local and present' diffi- 
culties are overcome, instead of being dodged, only in 
the presence of a far-off, permanent, over-powering good 
that is constantly kept in view. 

Dun's great commercial agency secures and furnishes 
to business houses information concerning the commer- 
cial standing and integrity of every business man in the 
country who wishes to have dealings with them. It asks 
the individual himself to give the details of his own busi- 
ness standing and to give references, from whom the 
agency can make independent inquiry about him. One of 



ATTENTION 47 

the curious and apparently irrelevant questions that it 
asks is, "Is he married?" What can the answer to that 
question have to do with a man's commercial standing 
and integrity? 

In the long run, and in determining the average 
value of men, the answer has a good deal to do with them. 
A family dependent on him gives to a man permanent 
pleasures that he will not readily forego, and life-long 
obligations which as a rule he will not voluntarily lay 
aside. It is not so easy for him to "quit and begin over 
again." It turns his business into a means to a higher 
and permanent end. He is more certain to have steady 
habits, to conserve his powers for legitimate purposes, to 
bend his energies steadily to the accomplishment of what 
he undertakes. His family is the surest pledge that he 
will make a success of himself, because his attention is 
permanently concentrated on one object. And because 
his attention is permanently fixed on that one object, he 
will also fix it, by force of will or in any other possible 
way, upon every detail of his business. 

Such a permanent interest as the student's ambition 
for an education, and the desire to realize clearly con- 
ceived ideals and willingness to make sacrifices for them, 
if allowed to exercise their full influence on the details 
of the daily work, throw those petty details into an en- 
tirely new light, give them an interest of their own, 
as a necessary part of the great whole. The perfection 
of any part of our knowledge seems to bear a direct rela- 



48 THE ART OF STUDY 

tion to its importance in the scheme as a whole. What- 
ever seems unimportant to the main purpose is not likely 
to receive the attention of the individual, and if it does 
not receive his attention it will be indefinite, hazy and 
worthless. 

The woodsman who spends the prime of his life in 
the forest, hunting information about pine lands, devel- 
ops all the skill of an expert. He sees every pine, can 
estimate accurately the number of feet of lumber the 
land will yield per acre or quarter section, notes carefully 
the distances to the banks of streams, and the character of 
the land, whether dry or swampy. He is very alert for 
everything that has a direct bearing on his business. 
Along with this essential information, and skill in finding 
and handling it, he has accumulated a large mass of 
collateral information. He thinks he knows the differ- 
ent kinds of trees in the forest well. He would resent 
an insinuation that he did not know all about elms. He 
can recognize one as far as it can be seen. But if he 
were required to give the information on which to base 
a scientific definition of an elm-tree, if he were asked to 
describe the peculiar qualities of the elm by which he 
recognized it he might be at an utter loss. He is what is 
called an impressionist. He knows the elm as a whole, 
that it is different from all other trees; but he may be 
utterly unable to give a good description of the mode of 
branching, the shape and character of the leaves, and the 
peculiar way in which the bark is cracked — the characters 
on which the impression as a whole depends. And if he 



ATTENTION 49 

fails, the reason is, that his attention was never fixed on 
each one separately. 

It may sound like a hard saying, but the great bulk 
of what we know belongs in the same class with the 
pine-hunter^s knowledge of the elm. It is this kind of 
knowledge that makes boys and girls say frankly, "I 
know, but I can^t tell it"; and causes grown men and 
women to give somewhat more elegant apologies for the 
indefiniteness of what they know. We cannot define the 
commonest things, though we may know enough to recog- 
nize them, and we may know what they are for. 

The reason for this is not far to seek, but much more 
difficult to overcome. Our knowledge of nearly all things 
never had its start from a sharp act of attention, followed 
by careful consideration and association of this new 
knowledge with what we already know. Like Topsy, it 
was not born, it only "growed," bit by bit, until we think 
we know a lot of things that we do not know at all. It was 
^^absorbed." Such knowledge always lacks both accuracy 
and clearness of detail. 

Imperfection of voluntary attention is a general 
characteristic of the human mind. It is the chief cause of 
the infinite imperfection of our knowledge as compared, 
not with ideal knowledge, but with what it might actually 
be. 

A class of eight fairly bright, well-read young men 
was reading Irving's Alhambra, and each in turn was 
called upon to define and distinguish the two words 



50 THE ART OF STUDY 

elegance and grmideur. Everyone made the attempt; no 
one felt that he did not know; but no one could do it 
satisfactorily. The saying from the primary grades "I 
know but I can't tell'' was quoted to them^, and they 
accepted it as a good description of their condition. A 
curious companion piece to this is the fact that in the 
same lesson occurred several words which none of them 
had ever seen before. These they had to look up care- 
full}^, and they gave correct definitions for all of them. 
They had all seen the words elegance and grandewr 
scores of times in their reading, and had often used 
them. When asked why they were content to leave 
matters thus when the very purpose of their reading was 
to study the style of Irving, they answered that they 
thought they knew. 

They depended on something that they never had. 
They never did know the meanings of elegance and grand' 
eur and the distinction between them. They felt somc*- 
thing in connection with the two words and that was all. 
The reason for this condition of things lies near at 
hand. The attention had never been deliberately directed 
toward the meaning of either word. Not one of the class 
had ever studied carefully either word separately or the 
two together for purposes of comparison and discrim- 
ination. Their knowledge of the two words had, uncon- 
sciously and without effort, been absorbed, bit by bit, 
during a long period of time, from the various contexts 
in which they had been seen and heard. These students 
saw the distinction between the words ^^through a glass, 



ATTENTION 51 

darkly/' Not one of them had ever attended to the ele- 
ments that go to make up the conception of grandeur. 

The facts set forth in the preceding paragraphs have 
another important lesson for the student. Not only was 
the knowledge of those young men very imperfect^ but 
the chances, as shown above, were all against their ever 
improving it. The two words with which they were more 
or less familiar and which they were likely to meet again 
at every turn whenever they read good literature, were 
left without attention; while other words, which they 
had never met before and were never likely to meet 
again, they studied very carefully. This apparently 
strange performance is not abnormal, but perfectly char- 
acteristic of most people. 

Direct attention to the significance of those words, 
when they were first met in the studenfs intellectual career, 
would have resulted in an analysis of their meaning and 
an accurate understanding of what they stand for. If 
that had happened at the outset, every later recurrence 
of the word grandeur would have increased its signifi- 
cance. Thought could work upon it, the idea could grow. 
Every new context would add some new suggestion to 
the old meaning, because the word was understood. 
Without this clear understanding of the idea from the 
outset there is no nucleus to which new experience can 
cling, and it fades into nothingness again. It may be 
laid down as a mental axiom that knowledge of any 
subject cannot improve, no matter how much it is studied, 
unless strenuous attention is given to the first stages of 



52 THE ART OF STUDY 

that knowledge, so that there will be a nucleus around 
which the later additions can gather. 

If attention is not carefully concentrated upon the 
first steps, it is not likely to be later; it is not easily 
fixed upon what is already "familiar/^ Our lives are full 
of the proof of this truth. Men and women listen to 
soul-stirring sermons and sing inspiring hymns withoiit 
a twitch of muscle or a tinge of color in thought or feel- 
ing, — ^not because they do not believe them, but because 
attention has been withdrawn. The performance of these 
things has become habitual, — it is a mere beating of time. 
Steady attention to what is said and sung would result in 
a religious upheaval. Most of our reading is like this. 
The movement is mechanical ; there is no thinking. The 
idea ceases to develop and the attention is withdrawn. 
Like the organ-grinder, we turn the crank all day — and 
are utterly deaf to the tune. This is the pit that the 
student falls into, and steep and slippery are the sides 
thereof. 

It is infinitely more difficult to make a healthy tree 
out of a scrubby little plant than it is to attend carefully 
to the plant from the time the seed is placed in the 
ground. It is the wrong start that ruins both trees 
and men. It is the wrong start that makes our knowledge 
hazy and worthless. A far-reaching interest in every 
detail is what secures attention to what is done at every 
step, and attention to each detail, .especially the first in 
the series, is essential to success. After a tree is once well- 
started, it develops resisting powers of its own. It can 



ATTENTION 53 

cope with conditions around it on its own account. And 
if one's knowledge of a subject is started right, by close 
attention, it will far more readily grow right thereafter. 

When the mind has once considered a subject even 
in the crudest and most haphazard fashion, it is not very 
likely to get reconsideration. When even the most imper- 
fect attention has once been given to a fact, it is never 
likely to recover from the effects of that imperfection. 

It is this kind of imperfection of attention that viti- 
ates so much of every student's work. Some details, of 
course, have no vital bearing on the results. One may 
have a very dear friend and yet not know the color of his 
eyes. This might be called an insignificant detail. If it 
were important to know, one could find out easily at the 
next meeting with that friend. But in a student's work, 
things always depend on each other. An error of detail 
due to lack of attention, vitiates the whole result. Once 
a trifle of this sort nearly forced the writer out of college. 
A railway mail clerk sent a letter addressed to a town 
in one state to a town of the same name in an adjoining 
state. He was apparently more familiar with the town in 
the latter state, habit was in its favor, the presumption 
was in his favor, that a letter coming from that direction 
was intended for that town. The postmaster held it until 
it came up to be advertised. He had doubtless handled 
the letter every day. But attention to the name of the 
state had nothing to do with the matter. That had been 
^'attended to" long ago. The chances indeed were all 
against its being attended to, because, had not judgment 



54 THE ART OF STUDY 

been prononnced ? The necessity of advertising created a 
new situation; and then the address was carefully noted 
and a very important business letter was forwarded. 

The same kind of importance attaches to the details 
of a student^s work, because each depends on the others 
for its value. Of his work especially it is true that there 
are twenty ways of doing it wrong and there is only one 
way of doing it right. There may be a hundred steps 
in the process, and a single error at any point destroys 
the value of the whole. It is only when the vital impor- 
tance of each detail to the value of the results as a whole 
is fully realized that attention is likely to be habitually 
concentrated on each detail when it is first dealt with. 

The worst errors of the student are due, not to ignor- 
ance but to lack of attention at every point to all the 
conditions of the problem or question that he is dealing 
with, which he really understands as well as anyone does. 
It is not ignorance, but inattention, that spoils so much 
of the student's work; whether he is solving a problem in 
algebra, translating a Latin sentence, or making a chem- 
ical experiment. One error in the writing of a plus or 
minus sign, or in the use of a conjunction, or in carelessly 
using a re-agent from the wrong bottle, spoils the whole 
performance. Many never learn to avoid this kind of 
error. In every instance it is a case of doing one thing 
and thinking of another, of "keeping the hands at work 
and giving the head a holiday.'^ Chronic lapse of atten- 
tion from the vital details that make up the whole of an 
algebraic problem or the problem of a human life is what 



ATTENTION 55 

keeps the ninety and nine out among the barren hills 
of failure. And steady, strenuous, habitual concentration 
of all the powers of the mind, so that each detail is cor- 
rectly dealt with, is what guides the hundredth man 
through the beautiful gates of success. 



56 THE ART OF STUDY 



CHAPTER VI. 

EFFECT OF MENTAL ALERTNESS ON SCHOLAESHIP. 

One of the ends to be sought in the training of at- 
tention is a habit of mental alertness. Facility in direct- 
ing and riveting the attention will grow silently with the 
years. But in addition to that will be developed a state of 
expectation, a feeling that things will happen. Even 
though the mind may often be mistaken about what is 
going to happen, the chronic attitude of alertness keeps 
it ready to receive what is coming. It is this attitude 
of readiness that makes the acquisition of new knowl- 
edge so easy and effective in the trained scholar. 

The surest way for either a small boy or a man to do 
the least amount of work with the relatively greatest 
expenditure of energy and waste of time is to bring his 
hoe down at every stroke with just enough force to miss 
cutting the weeds. There is always a pathetic feature 
about the second stroke of the hoe at a weed. The worker 
has reduced himself to a minimum of courage by previous 
failure, for courage does not thrive on failure. But he 
also reasons that the weed, being already half cut, does 
not need so hard a stroke; whereas in reality the weed, 
already wounded and limp, is harder to cut than if it 
had been done at the first blow. The lack of attention 



EFFECT OF MENTAL ALERTNESS 57 

constantly results in failure to adjust the effort accurately 
to the results to be accomplished. Of course, the real 
cause of the inefficiency may he laziness. But the lazy 
man is always the hardest worker relatively, because he 
accomplishes the smallest possible results with the effort 
that he does make. Keeping busy, either voluntarily or 
under compulsion, is no sign that valuable work is being 
done. Half as many strokes of the hoe, carefully gauged 
so that just a little more than enough energy is applied, 
will cut more weeds, and cut them better. Concentration 
of the mental powers on the work in hand makes weed- 
cutting easier. It results in more progress with less effort. 
A hot-air furnace can be made to devour tons of coal 
without ever heating a single room. The stoker only needs 
to be so listless that he does not put in quite enough coal 
and fails to regulate the fire properly. The coal and his 
time are utterly wasted, because his mind was not given to 
his business so that there might be a careful adjustment 
of the fire to the work to he done. The main object is 
entirely missed because the attention is not concentrated 
on the little difference between failure and success. Just 
a little more time, a little more coal, and a little more 
brains, all of them available, represent the difference 
between a cold house and a warm one. All real efficiency 
is represented by the surplus energy, by the last small 
margin of effort. But that last effective addition to ordi- 
nary fruitless effort is never made unless the attention 
is riveted on the results to be attained, which converts 
the effort into a means to an end. 



58 THE ART OF STUDY 

Half the mental energy of students is worse than 
wasted because it produces no results ; it cuts no weeds, it 
heats no rooms. An obscure impression will not remain 
in the memory at all, and if by chance it is recalled, it is 
valueless because it lacks clearness of detail and there is 
always uncertainty whether it is in the rfght place when it 
does come back to the mind. Now the clearness of an im- 
pression depends directly on the degree to which the mind 
was concentrated on the subject when that impression was 
made. The value of the first impression depends on its viv- 
idness, whether the matter under consideration is a rule 
in algebra or the beauty of Minnehaha ; and vividness de- 
pends on the intensity of attention. 

Steady attention makes the student^s knowledge au- 
thoritative and reliable. He knows that he knows it. It is 
easy to remember, and there is no need of constantly veri- 
iying it whenever it is used afterwards. Under such 
conditions a spirit of confidence is bred which makes 
vigorous mental action easy and pleasant. Confidence 
that what has been done is correct, because carefully at- 
tended to, makes new work stimulating instead of de- 
pressing. 

Half the human race, even in civilized countries, dies 
before the age of twenty-one. Many disasters resulting in 
death are unavoidable. But at least a very large propor- 
tion of the deaths that occur before the natural term of 
life is complete are due to inattention to "minor details.'^ 
In an algebraic problem these details have their true value 
revealed in the answer. The answer to an error in the 



EFFECT OF MENTAL ALERTNESS 59 

course of life is often death. One man breaks his neck 
by walking through a skylight, another is killed by a 
falling brick, another is sent into eternity by an explosion 
or a street car. Legions of lives have been lost or per- 
manently crippled by measles or scarlet fever merely be- 
cause the sick ones did not stay in bed long enough. 
Neglect of the first chill or tickle in the throat is the 
plu's or minus sign in the problem, and the answer is 
often pneumonia, consumption, death. In all these cases 
it was failure to attend to details that caused the troublti. 
Some one committed an avoidable blunder. 

The real importance of a detail is never understood 
unless it is attended to. A detail cannot be safely neg- 
lected until it has been attended to and the mind has had 
an opportunity to pass upon it. The argument can, of 
course, be made that constant, strenuous attention to ev- 
ery detail would produce exhaustion, and that is true. 
But habit makes even attention easy. And it is not a 
question whether, at a given moment, the mind shall be 
attentive or asleep. During waking hours it is always 
occupied with something. The only question is, shall it 
be occupied with the business in hand. If the mind is in 
a theatre while the body is left to the care of the spinal 
cord while it crosses the street, there is likely to be a col- 
lision. It is not a question of wearing out the mind by 
constant attention, but of keeping the attention fixed 
where it belongs. 

What makes it so difficult to train the attention is 
that steady concentration does not seem necessary. In 



60 THE ART OF STUDY 

the ordinary events of life^ it is possible to patch up a 
faihire by doing the work over again. The consequences 
of inattention and error are not grievous enough to startle 
the mind into a state of permanent alertness. We are to 
a large extent protected from the consequences of in- 
attention. But if men would take a long look around 
them it would become evident at once that only a very 
small percentage of men and women are successful in any 
of the callings of life. And this is so because of their 
chronic indifference to each detail as it comes up. 

Whether a drop of water shall go into the Atlantic or 
the Pacific may depend on a little gust of wind on the 
Rocky Mountain water-shed. After it has fallen, no one 
is likely to bring it back. Whether a whole passage under 
translation shall be misunderstood may depend on the 
careless treatment of a little word of only three letters. 

Nearly all wild animals have this mental alertness 
developed in an intense degree. Birds and beasts cannot 
ask the question that the little child asks, "What comes 
next?" But they all know that something serious is 
likely to happen at any time, and they are in a state of 
chronic readiness. A robin will hardly pull a new-found 
worm out of the ground without first taking a careful 
look around. When the humming-bird is perched, its head 
is in motion all the time. That state of mind is what 
makes it possible to deal effectively and correctly with 
everything that comes up and as soon as it comes up. 

This chronic keenness of the mental powers bears 
fruit in swift and accurate results. Expectation may 



EFFECT OF MENTAL ALERTNESS 61 

often go wrong; 'but no kind of result will escape atten- 
tion. When I was a yonng boy my older brother and I 
hunted the cattle every night for miles up and down the 
river bottoms. I have often been impressed since with the 
fact that things are not what they seem ; but even yet it 
seems to me that a cow-bell is the most deceptive thing in 
the world. It was always so important that we should 
hear the bells and correctly fix their direction that our 
powers sometimes seemed to run away with us. We 
seemed to hear them where they were not. These were 
not imaginings of a roving fancy. We had to deal with 
hard, cold facts, but in our anxiety to hear the bells 
our senses deceived us. x\lertness led us into some mis- 
takes; but we never failed to hear the bells when they 
did ring within ear-shot; because, for the time at least, 
they were the only object of our lives. But there is not 
much danger from over-alertness. The danger lies in 
the other direction. 

The timid little wild rabbit seems to be anxious all 
the time. Its senses are acute and nothing escapes 
its notice. But the skunk is extremely careless. The 
former's future depends on its present attentiveness. 
The latter has an obnoxious means of defense. It can 
be deliberate and careless because it is not obliged to be 
alert. And here lies open before us the reason for the 
chronic carelessness and inattention of civilized youth to 
the strenuous things of life. 

Society protects its individuals from harm. We 
delegate our alertness to the police department and the 



62 THE ART OF STUDY 

fire brigao'e. The search for food and other comforts 
rests upon the shoulders of the older members of the com- 
munity. The mind, during the period of its development, 
is entirely relieved from the stress of life. If the habit 
of steady and close attention is developed during that 
period, it must be entirely voluntary. There is no coercion 
of stern necessity. The conditions for the symmetrical 
development of the intellectual powers are ideal in the 
lives of American youth. The educational labors placed 
before them are carefully selected. They are so graded 
that they cultivate the spirit of hope and the desire 
to make the struggle for mastery. Ideals are fostered. 
But the factor of necessity is eliminated and the oppor- 
tunities for carelessness become terrible temptations be- 
cause no fatal consequences immediately follow careless- 
ness and inattention. 

The importance of the will in the student's success 
will be discussed elsewhere. But he needs to remember 
that the habit of steady and prolonged concentration of 
his mental powers, however this attention may be at- 
tracted or riveted, is the indispensable condition of ac- 
curate, rapid and useful work. 



OBSERVATION 63 



CHAPTEE YIl. 

OBSERVATION. 

The senses either directly or indirectly furnish ns 
with all the materials of human knowledge. All the ob- 
jects of love and hate, pain and pleasure, come into the 
world of our thought through the medium of the eyes 
and ears and other organs of sense. Observation, in its 
broadest sense, is therefore the first great step in the 
development of knowledge. It is not, however, the simple 
process that the uncritical mind usually thinks it is. Good 
eyes and ears are no guarantee of good powers of observa- 
tion; for if it were so, defects in those powers could be 
cured by spectacles and ear-trumpets. 

Nor is mere intentness in looking at a thing a sure 
mark of good observation. A calf may be an adept at 
gazing, but very much of a fool, even from the calf point 
of view. As it stands and looks at you through the fence, 
it is manifestly intent enough upon what is passing before 
it, and you may be reasonably sure that it has a pair of 
good eyes; but there is no sort of guarantee that by 
gazing that calf has learned a single thing. 

The controlling factor in observation is not the 
senses but the mind. One cannot drink water without 
swallowing; no more can anyone see or hear — observe — 



64 THE ART OF STUDY 

without thinking. Observation of any kind really involves 
the action of all the powers of the mind. Observation 
means both looking at and seeing into a thing; that is 
scrutiny; and there is no real scrutiny without attention, 
comparison, discrimination, association and reflection. 

Good observation involves not only looking at a thing 
but analyzing it, taking it to pieces, so that one may 
know what it is made of. Many people who live in sec- 
tions of the country where granite is the common rock, 
do not even know its name. They simply know it as 
"rock". Others, people who have seen other kinds, know 
enough to distinguish granite from limestone; but they 
do this '"by the look of the rock," and not from any 
detailed knowledge of either kind. They know that lime- 
stone is gray and granite another kind of gray or even 
pink, and coarser. But anything like real observation 
never entered into the question. Their knowledge of rock 
was forced on them from the outside, not developed by 
any internal mental activity. 

In order that there may be any real knowledge of 
granite it needs to be taken, at least mentally, to pieces. 
A real observer, though he may never have seen a piece of 
granite before, will see immediately that it is not a simple 
material but is made up of three kinds of minerals; and 
that they are very different from each other — one the scaly 
mica, one the more or less transparent, very hard and 
glassy-looking quartz that breaks unevenly, and third, the 
moderately hard, white or pink feldspar that breaks with a 
smooth face. After he has thus taken the granite apart 



OBSERVATION 65 

lie really knows something about it. He can put it to- 
gether again mentally, and can tell why granite has its 
own peculiar color of gray or pink and how the combina- 
tion of the three minerals produces it. 

There is another vital step in the process of observa- 
tion. After the granite has been mentally taken apart 
and put together again, after the observer has exercised 
this rather unusual gift of second sight — to steal a good 
word from a vicious environment — after he has made 
the analysis, or while he is making it, he will compare 
the rock wath other things of tlie same kind. Either 
mentally or by means of specimens actually at hand, he 
compares it with gneiss and the rest of the granitic series. 
And now he is in a position to judge of the quality 
of his particular kind of granite. He knows where it be- 
longs among its kind ; knows whether its "grain" is coarse 
or fine, whether it will make a good building-stone or is 
good for nothing but a road-bed. 

The observer may now stop, or he may carry his 
observations to any length by making engineering tests 
concerning the strength of the rock and chemical tests 
on the minerals it contains. But whether he goes on or 
stops, whether his knowledge of granite remains relatively 
deep or shallow, it is valuable, because the process of get- 
ting it was correct. It may not be absolutely accurate, 
but more mental action of the same kind will make it 
accurate. 

It is clear then that observation, in its best sense, 
is not a simple process ; but involves the exercise of all the 



66 THE ART OF STUDY 

powers of the mind. It is a question of getting at the 
facts. And what is true of granite is true of a Latin or a 
German sentence or of any other subject. It involves an- 
alysis. A knowledge of a sentence involves taking it 
apart, consideration of the rules of construction, a knowl- 
edge of the words and their meanings. When it has been 
analyzed, so that its components are known and 
their relations to each other are clearly understood, it 
can be treated as a unit once more ; and its relation with 
all the rest of the passage can be intelligently determined. 
A piece of knowledge that has been thus dealt with 
is a permanent acquisition. As long as the fire of the 
intellect burns that bit of knowledge will glow. 

Defective observation furnishes nearly all the 
stumbling blocks in the path of the intellectual life. The 
materials of knowledge upon which the mind depends in 
making up its judgments are so uncertain and unreliable, 
that half the effort of a lifetime is spent in tinkering into 
usable shape the knowledge that we already have. 

N"o observation at all on a subject is infinitely worse 
than even poor observation. Second-hand knowledge, the 
bTilk of the contents of our minds, is not what colors our 
thoughts and gives form and force to our expression. 
The mental powers cannot play without blocks. N'early 
all American children know something about bears; but 
most of them never saw one. They have no good image of 
a bear to think with. But let a child once see a single 
bear; that bear will be forever after the type of all 
the bears it reads about. The size and shape, and move- 



OBSERVATION 67 

inents of that particular bear have affected the imagina- 
tion for life. That is the picture that always returns 
whenever "bear" is mentioned. It is the one real thing, 
the one case of actual observation, that has yielded a 
fertile idea. It looms out of and gives meaning to 
the great mass of wordy stuff that the child has heard and 
read about bears. No matter how many bears may 
be seen afterwards, that first image, which came when the 
mind was wide awake, remains the type and most inter- 
esting instance of "bear observation." 

Even when the mind is dealing only indirectly with 
facts, when it is romancing most vigorously, the power 
and beauty of its work depend upon a vast store of actual 
facts garnered by long and close observation. Great 
power of expression is developed only by the mind 
with great powers of observation. If it comes con- 
stantly in contact with actual things, its descriptions 
are vivid, its style is lucid; it leaves upon the reader 
an overwhelming sense of mastery. What is said has the 
flavor of authority, the reader submits to be taught 
because the very adjectives and figures of speech reveal 
real knowledge. There runs through the style an ele- 
ment of power which is derived only from long and close 
familiarity with facts. 

As there can be no real power of expression or style 
in language unless the mind is equipped with a large 
body of concrete facts, so no mere "strength of mind," 
without such facts, will ever make a real scholar. Bacon 



68 THE ART OF STUDY 

has given us a picture of a body of men with powerful 
minds but with little substantial knowledge. He found 
himself, at Cambridge, England, "amid men of sharp and 
strong wits, and abundance of leisure, and small variety 
of reading, their wits being shut up in the cells of a few 
authors, chiefly Aristotle, their dictator, as their persons 
were shut up in the cells of monasteries and colleges ; and 
who, knowing little history, either of nature or time, did, 
out of no great quantity of matter, and infinite agitation 
of wit, spin cobwebs of learning, admirable for the fine- 
ness of thread, and work, but of no substance or profit". 
One might listen till the end of the world to lectures 
on the principles of Zoology and not get as much really 
valuable knowledge that will cling to the mind as one may 
get by looking ten minutes at a fly with a pocket lens 
or even with the naked eye. Neither child nor man can 
get any real grasp of a subject that has not been intro- 
duced by a preliminary course of actual observation. No 
strength of mind in either teacher or student can take 
the place of facts. One might read volumes on the doc- 
trine of evolution and become a firm believer — and yet 
be as helpless as a baby in the presence of an unbeliever. 
A little chloroform; a scalpel and scissors or in case of 
dire necessity a jack-knife and a tooth-pick for tools; 
a rabbit, a bird, a frog, a tadpole and a fish ; and the time 
and patience to dissect carefufly and compare their arte- 
rial systems, would be worth a library full of books to the 
would-be defender of the doctrine. A man cannot be 
frightened away from his facts. 



OBSERVATION 69 

One may, by means of rules of grammar and rhetoric, 
make faultless English, but it will be lifeless too, unless 
the mind is familiar with the best English that has ever 
been made. We accomplish far less by rule than we do by 
observation and imitation. A careful study of a few 
great books like Shakspere and the Bible puts the student 
in a position to tell whether the rules are good or not. 
If he has often tasted the real thing, he is able to judge 
of the value of a recipe. 

Our education is too wordy. We know too many 
things and do not know them well enough. Words are 
excessively poor substitutes for things. We strain and 
groan inwardly to grasp the significance of what is said, 
when a simple illustration would make the whole thing 
plain, when a single sharply observed fact would turn 
the explanation into child^s play. "Much study is a weari- 
ness of the flesh" because there are not actual facts 
enough from personal observation for the mind to make 
images out of. 

If you want your feelings stirred, a good description of 
a mountain storm will do it. But if you want them singed 
for life, if you want to know mist and rain and wind 
and thunder and lightning at first hand, if you want a 
standard that will serve to measure noise and storm 
by as long as you live, sit out doors on your bundle of 
bedding, near the foot of Yosemite Falls at two o'clock 
in the morning. Be sure that your stomach is empty, 
too, even the lion hears and sees more things and thinks 



70 THE ART OF STUDY 

more surely and quickly — ^he is a better observer when he 
is hungry. 

We are made to believe too many things by the per- 
sistent noise and desk-pounding of the talker and by the 
ceaseless iteration of the writer. Slowly but surely beliefs 
are slipped into the pigeon holes of our minds without our 
having ever thoroughly analyzed them. But when a 
mental crisis comes, when the real test of putting into 
actual use what we have acquired comes, then it is easy 
to see and feel the difference between a fact that has been 
carefully observed and one that has been heard about. 
Even with the best of opportunities for observation we 
are obliged to accept many things on hearsay, at second 
hand. But no student can be considered a success who 
does not seek to verify at the earliest opportunity infor- 
mation thus received from others. We are all under the 
temptation of persistently using second hand informa- 
tion even when it is possible to make a personal observa- 
tion for ourselves. The writer once took a whole course 
in Physical Geography without going out of the school- 
room to verify a single statement of the book. The whole 
subject was a mere matter of words. 

The grave danger everywhere in education is the 
almost irresistible tendency to get the information that is 
wanted, in the shortest and easiest way. That way is 
through a book. It is the line of least resistance. In the 
short run, it is profitable to get all information at second 
hand, because it is easier ; in the long run it pays to be an 
independent, accurate observer, because knowledge se- 



OBSERVATION 71 

cured in that way is vivid and permanent. There is an 
almost religious power of conviction in a fact, which mere 
words about that fact will not even begin to rouse. 



72 THE ART OF STUDY 



CHAPTEK YIIL 

GROWTH OF THE POWER OF OBSERVATION. 

The ability to observe for one's self seems to l)e born 
with some men. In others the growth of this power is 
so slow, that even in their later years they seem unable 
to see what is before them. This slowness of improvement 
is due to the fact that the power of observation is not 
a simple thing, like staring at a post, but a name for the 
concentrated application of all the powers of the intellect 
upon the object of immediate attention. 

It is easy to build a house, and it grows fast after 
it is begun. One thing can be done at a time. If the 
power of observation could be built in this way, on the 
principle of "one thing at a time," by attending first to 
the memory and then to the power of thought and then 
to the power of attention, the steps of the process could 
be watched, the progress made could be easily measured 
and one could decide what needed to be done next. 

But observation is not built ; it grows, like the human 
body. Our physical growth would be a fitful thing if it 
were regulated by ourselves. Length and strength of arm 
and leg, and size of brain are all provided for at once. 
Growth is imperceptible and yet certain because it takes 
place in all the parts at once. No one part can grow 



GROWTH OF THE POWER OF OBSERVATION 73 

while the others rest, without producing a monster. We 
cannot comprehend it or keep track of the details ; the re- 
sponsibility,, if we had to assume it, would overwhelm us 
at once. 

It is this disastrous assumption of responsibility for 
things with which he need have no concern at all that 
raises the mountains of difficulty before the student. 
For the physical health and development it is enough to 
know that judicious eating and exercise will make the 
body grow. The laws of life attend to that, if we attend 
properly to the matter of food. And so of the develop- 
ment of intellectual power. We can watch the increase 
in our information ; but the more vital thing, the increase 
of power, takes place so slowly that it cannot be observed ; 
but the growth is certain because it is ubiquitous. 

Two important conditions enter into the cultivation 
of the power of observation; and without a proper real- 
ization of these, it is futile to try to understand the 
process. We attend to and observe closely only those 
things which have some sort of interest for us; and we 
see only what we are looking for. 

When the barber came away from his visit to the 
palace and was asked what he thought of the king, he 
summed up his observations with the remark that he 
thought the king was exceedingly well trimmed. Being 
a barber, he could observe this feature critically and ex- 
haustively. His power of observation ended where his 
training and his interest ended. When Charles Darwin's 
party landed on Tierra del Fuego, the wretched natives 



74 THE ART OF STUDY 

looked upon the little boats as marvels of perfection; 
because these came within range of their interests and 
understanding. The big ship in the offing did not at- 
tract them, they did not observe it carefully because it 
was too big for them. 

The point is that every man's powers of observation 
are restricted in practice to the things that have some sort 
of interest for him. They must have some sort of vital 
connection with his life and thought in order to stimulate 
mental activity. The man or woman seeking culture 
needs to be aware that the extent to which his powers 
of observation are exercised depends on the extent and 
depth and variety of his intellectual interests. 

The principle that one sees only what he is looking 
for, lies at the foundation of the peculiar way in which 
progress is made in the search for knowledge. Search 
implies some sort of knowledge of what is going to be 
found. Haphazard observation is like haphazard walking 
— it leads nowhere and ends in weariness. 

Let us illustrate this principle from an experience 
common to most men and women. The vast majority of 
intelligent people have no reliable conception of what 
constitutes a good picture or statue. They may feel 
blindly that a painting is good; but they cannot really 
appreciate it because it is not in their power to make an 
intelligent observation of it. They have no means of an- 
alyzing it, they do not understand what combination of 
qualities constitutes a good picture, they cannot think 
separately of each of its qualities. They have no theory 



GROWTH OF THE POWER OF OBSERVATION 75 

of art, no standard to go by. They do not know what to 
look for. 

I should not dare venture an opinion on any work 
of art, because I never had any teaching even in the rudi- 
ments of the subject. At one time a picture was for 
the most part a matter of size and color. But there 
came a time when I could form a humble opinion in si- 
lence. The necessary power to appreciate a picture did 
not come to me by much staring; I read Lessing^s Lao- 
coon. It stimulated me because it lent me the power of 
analysis. It taught me what the elements are that (con- 
stitute a work of art. Ever since that reading art has 
been a pleasure to me. My opinion is worthless to oth- 
ers ; but I know at least something about what to loolc for. 
A world of pleasure was opened to me through this essay 
because it gave me a theory of art. Even the possibility 
of observation was wanting till I was taught what to look 
for; and this was done by placing in my hands some of 
the general principles of art. 

Charles Darwin relates an instance strikingly illus- 
trative of this general inability to see things without the 
help of theory or general principles. When still a young 
man, he accompanied Sedgwick, the great geologist, to 
Wales to study the Cambrian rocks and collect fossils. 
At Cym Idwal they literally trod upon the evidences of 
glacial action in the past. Moraines, stray boulders, all 
the most striking evidence of glaciation lay exposed be- 
fore them, mutely pleading to be seen and interpreted. 
The facts seemed actually to be thrust upon them. He 



76 THE ART OF STUDY 

wrote in after years that if a house had been bnrned on 
the spot, the ruins conld not have furnished better evi- 
dence of a fire than all these things gave of the former 
existence of glaciers there. 

But neither of these men, the one soon to become 
a famous scientific observer, the other already famous, 
saw anything at all. They were as blind to the facts and 
their meaning as a ploughman would have been. The 
failure to see was certainly not due to stupidity, nor to 
the lack of training; but solely to the fact that there 
was as yet no glacial theory by the help of which to 
look for and see these facts. Nobody else saw anything. 
After Charpentier, who was familiar with the work of 
the existing Alpine glaciers, had suggested that the Al- 
pine boulders scattered over the Jura mountains far away 
from their origin, had been carried there by glaciers, 
and Agassiz had expanded the "glacial theory" to explain 
the same kind of phenomena elsewhere, it was easier to 
see the glacial phenomena, scattered as they are over all 
of northern Europe. Things which fifty years ago were 
hardly seen at all, now constitute the materials of a 
whole branch of geological science. The work of the 
great ice-sheet, in carving valleys, scratching rocks and 
transporting gravel and boulders, and the work of the 
floods of water from its southern edges in sorting soils, 
changing ancient river courses and cutting new ones are 
as charming to read about as any romance can be. Men 
see the facts now because they are looking for them. 

It is not possible to tell, even with the help of the- 



GROWTH OF THE POWER OF OBSERVATION 77 

ory exactly what ought to be found; many mistakes have 
been made which have thrown men off the trail of truth. 
But it is known that mighty forces were at work and that 
they produced consequences that can be unravelled. The 
whole point of view is different from what it was in 
Darwin's early days. After the theory of glacial action 
in the northern hemisphere became thoroughly under- 
stood the knowledge of glacial geology grew by such 
long, swift leaps that it would seem as if the men of 
former years must have been utterly stupid not to see 
the facts before. Facts for which an explanation is al- 
ready at hand are easy to find, and when found are easily 
fitted into the scheme of facts already known. Facts 
for which no explanation is ready are not likely to be 
either seen or looked for. 

This is why the world's progress in learning things- 
has been so slow, and why the course of true knowledge 
is so zigzag. Progress is largely a matter of weapons, 
in the purely intellectual life as well as in war and com- 
merce. A new force like electricity no more surely 
changes the face of the business world, the long-range 
repeating rifle no more surely transforms warfare, than 
a theory, even though only partly true, multiplies the 
powers of the thinking observer. There must be pio- 
neering done in intellectual things to get some general 
explanation, and then the solid road-bed is built by work- 
ing backwards by the light of the new theory. 

So it is that observation of a fact of any kind in- 
volves two important sets of acts. It must be analyzed^ 



78 THE ART OF STUDY 

taken apart, so that its nature may be understood, and it 
must be explained, associated with all the other known 
facts of its kind and treated as an illustration of a gen- 
eral principle or as the effect of some cause. 

It will only be necessary to give some further illus- 
trations to show that mere isolated facts, that have 
forced themselves upon the attention, but have not been 
really observed, are of very little value to the intellectual 
life ; and that there can be no good observation unless the 
mind is equipped with general principles, so that, as 
soon as the facts come under notice, they can be brought 
into close relation with all the facts already known. 

If two men walk down the dry bed of a western 
stream that flows only during the winter, both will see 
rocks and gravel and sand. But here they part intellect- 
ual company. One of them, who knows something of 
the effects of water action, perhaps only that such a force 
as water, acting constantly in one direction must produce 
well-marked results, can see, as he passes from the slopes 
to the level stretches, that the stones become smaller, 
gravel is more common and is succeeded by stretches 
of sand. His active mind grasps the fact that the 
lessening force of the water drops the stones first and 
carries the sand farther along. Explanation such as 
this is a violent stimulant to further active observa- 
tion; the subject grows. He is struck by the fact 
that there are no rolling stones in the steeper parts of 
the stream. They are all packed and can be safely 
stepped upon and trusted to keep their places; because 



GROWTH OF THE POWER OF OBSERVATION 79 

the water would push a loose stone along until it im- 
bedded itself in a firm resting place. Lower down, the 
little stones, if they are shingly in their nature, are laid 
like the shingles on a roof — the long way parallel with 
the course of the stream, the lower end projecting and 
the upper end buried beneath those farther up. To the 
real observer there is an explanation for the fact. That 
is the position of least resistance, the only one in which 
they can shed water. If the upper end of a stone pro- 
jected, the water would topple it over and push it out of 
place. 

These explanations are all so simple that to give 
them seems ridiculous ; but that is the gist of science and 
sound scholarship. Because he thinks, the arrangement 
of rock and gravel and sand is as orderly as the words 
in a line of English poetry. Every fact is a record left 
by some force that has been at work, and he interprets 
the record. 

The other man is not like unto him. He sees the 
rock and gravel and sand, but the only observation that 
he makes as he passes down the stream-bed is that the 
walking is hard. He leaves the bed and takes to the cow- 
trail on the bank, for the same reason that the cow does. 
He has the cow's type of mind. There is no further ob- 
servation because the relations of things to each other 
are not seen. The first few facts arouse no thought, so 
the rest all remain entirely unobserved. 

In succeeding chapters great emphasis will be laid 
upon the matter of right thinking. It is only necessary 



80 THE ART OF STUDY 

here to point out how a mind well-equipped with general 
ideas can assimilate new facts, how good observation de- 
pends on the ability to dispose of each new fact, as it 
comes up, as a part of some system of thought. 

Every reader can in later life recall some of the 
most interesting experiences of childhood and see how 
much was missed in the way of new observations because 
the real significance of the things that were seen was not 
understood. It is well for us that childhood is the most 
impressionable age, the time when the retentive memory 
is at its best; because, if it were not so, while the power 
of thought is yet undeveloped, while there is yet little 
capacity for thinking out the relations of things to each 
other, there could hardly be any memories of childhood. 
Even at their best, the memories of childhood are wo- 
fully defective because so much was missed, so much 
remained unobserved, for the reasons given above. 

In my early boyhood I swam and fished and poled 
canoes in a river that was wonderful to me. It seemed 
to be made for the use of boys — moderate in size, but 
large enough for our capacities. It seemed to have a 
very obliging nature. There were plenty of deep holes 
for fishing and swimming, and always on the opposite 
shore was a sand-bar. It was a great convenience to have 
a sand-bar to dress and undress and play and burn our 
naked, wet backs upon ; and a sloping bottom on which to 
wade straight into deep water. And when we did not want 
to swim, things were admirably fixed for wading. The 



GROWTH OF THE POWER OF OBSERVATION 81 

shallow riffles always stretched from the lower end of one 
sand-bar to the upper end of the next bar below, which 
was always on the other side of the river. There was 
also one remarkable inconvenience, which was felt most 
keenly when we wanted to cover distances in the canoe. 
Then the river was made up entirely of *^ends/^ and the 
cattle traveled faster than we did by cutting through 
the woods at every bend and coming to the bank again 
below. Of course, this was exasperating but that is all 
we knew or felt about the facts. 

I remember each of these things distinctly, by itself, 
because of constant association with them during a long 
period of time, because they all came in touch with my 
desires and necessities. But I never thought of them 
all together, holes and sand-bars, riffles and bends, as the 
effects of one constantly working cause, as being appar- 
ently related to each other by the laws of nature. If I 
had been wide awake to the fact that in one place the 
bank is steep and the water is deep because the current 
there drove against the bank, and that below this place 
on the same side of the river is a sand-bar because the 
current slackened when it struck the bank and had to 
drop the material it got there before it gathered speed 
again; and if I had known that in a winding river the 
current dashes first into one bank and then into the 
other, I should have known wliy our sand-bars always had 
holes opposite them and why the riffles crossed the river 
obliquely. And I should have seen a multitude of things 
that I never saw in my boyhood at all. 



82 THE ART OF STUDY 

There were some funny little '^half-moon lakes'' — 
they looked big to us then — hid away in the river bot- 
toms, too, made especially for us to catch frogs in. We 
were very familiar with them, — for had we not hunted 
hell-divers in vain and peppered the frogs daily to see 
them jump off the logs into the water? But many of 
the best of all these facts were utterly forgotten. They 
were linked only with our temporary interests and when 
these passed awa}^, the facts themselves were dumped on 
the rubbish heap of forgetfulness. 

When later in life I became familiar with the prin- 
ciples of water action, whither should my mind turn for 
illustrations but to the rivers of my boyhood? All the 
facts that I could remember underwent a wonderful 
transformation. They became related to each other; all 
that I remembered was explained. But there were great 
gaps of information left unfilled. Observation had not 
followed the facts, that they might be understood. They 
had merely been thrust upon the attention. Would the 
memory of a crescent pool in the woods be less vivid if 
I had observed that it was once a bend in the river ; that 
the latter at high water had taken a short cut and made 
a straight bed for itself and left the bend in the woods, 
and choked it up at both ends to be a frog-pond for the 
boys ? 

The observations of even the most impressionable 
period of life are fatally defective, from the student's 
point of view, unless they are made in the light of gen- 



GROWTH OF THE POWER OF OBSERVATION 83 

eral explanations that link all the facts together; because 
it is the desire to understand all the connections hetv-ecn 
facts that makes observation complete and exhaustive. 



84 THE ART OF STUDY 



CHAPTEE IX. 

DISCRIMINATION. 

If all the material objects in the world were spheri- 
cal, we should never think of making shape a subject of 
study. The work of comparison could never begin where 
there were no differences that could be detected. And, 
on the other hand, if all the objects of knowledge were 
entirely different from each other, so that no two had 
any qualities in common, there would be no basis for the 
growth of knowledge. No one ever feels called upon 
either to compare or discriminate between an apple and 
the sound of thunder. The powers of the human mind 
can be exercised only on things that are alike in some 
repects and unlike in others. It is only in the presence 
of different shapes that the mind begins to deal with 
the subject of shape by itself. It is only in dealing with 
different colors, that the subject of color becomes a dis- 
tinct subject of thought. 

At the very foundation of the intellectual life lie 
two mental processes that are as mutually dependent on 
each other as the reciprocal strokes of a pendulum. 
These are discrimination and association. The latter 
will be dealt with in a separate chapter. The process of 
discrimination is carried only as far as the individual's 



DISCRIMINATION 85 

interests require it. Most men are very poor judges of 
cloth because they have never cultivated the power of 
discrimination in that direction. They have a hazy 
knowledge that many differences exist, without knowing 
or being able to tell in what those differences consist. 
They can tell the difference between calico and woolen 
cloth; but not between woolen cloth and its cotton imi- 
tations. The larger differences between things are al- 
ways striking enough to take care of themselves. It is 
when things are very much alike that the trouble begins; 
and then the power to discriminate needs to be con- 
sciously trained. And training makes the expert. 

Sound scholarship depends largely on the power of 
discrimination. To illustrate its importance, I shall take 
an example that seems utterly insignificant. In so small 
a matter as the failure to discriminate the forms of two 
letters of the German alphabet there often lies a ter- 
rible possibility of evil to sound scholarship. I have 
known scores of students of sound mental endowments 
who persistently ignored the slight difference in form 
between the German f (s) and f (/), and confused them 
in the pronunciation of words until no amount of criti- 
cism or even censure seemed able to correct the habitual 
error. The initial error was so slight that it would seem 
to come well within the limits of blunders that can safely 
be neglected. But the confusion produced by the failure 
to make this single little discrimination between two 
printed letters of the alphabet and to preserve it care- 
fully in practice, ruined the pronunciation of otherwise 



86 THE ART OF STUDY 

good students. But there was another and far more dis- 
astrous effect. Every word that contained one of the 
mis-learned letters was likely to be looked for in the 
wrong place in the dictionary. The words were mis- 
understood, the context would throw no light on their 
meaning, they were dull, unorganizahle elements, they 
would not fit anywhere. German reading was a farce; 
knowledge of the German language was hopelessly de- 
fective. Eight judgment was impossible. 

This failure of discrimination was not due to poor 
eyesight, or to lack of intellectual capacity; but to sheer 
indisposition, almost stubborn unwillingness to at- 
tend to differences that seemed too minute to be worthy 
of consideration. This one instance is only a sample of 
quite a number of errors that are possible in dealing with 
the German alphabet. And at every point in the stu- 
dent's career the same problem comes up, in every day's 
work in every subject that is dealt with. The more mi- 
nute the differences between two things, the more likely 
they are to be overlooked; or worse still, if seen, to be 
ignored, until the very capacity for observing those dif- 
ferences seems to be lost. 

The vast importance of this matter comes home to 
the student only when he realizes that every fact that 
comes to him he uses at once as a tool with which to se- 
cure new facts. If each fact, when it is acquired, could 
be safely tucked away in a mental pigeon-hole where it 
would have no effect on the work of securing and dealing 
with other facts, this subject of careful discrimination 



DISCRIMINATION 87 

would not be a serious matter. There are various 
reasons for poor discrimination. But the most serious 
one is humanity's common failing — what Bagehot calls 
"an irritable desire to act directly/' The lack of pa- 
tience to make careful preparation and weigh all the con- 
ditions before each step is taken, results in a failure to 
discriminate. 

The thing chiefly to be desired for the student is 
that his knowledge of everything he touches shall be ac- 
curate, as far as it goes. It is impossible for him, at his 
stage of the work to know all there is to know, even 
about the German alphabet. But discrimination in this 
and in all other matters needs to be made so thorough 
that the student shall not think that a fact is one thing 
when it is really another. Flies burn off their wings in 
a gas flame because of a lack of discrimination. The 
student just as surely destroys the keen edge and the 
temper of his intellectual tools by failing to make a 
steady business of discrimination among facts. 

There are great differences among people in their 
powers of recognizing similarities or differences. Some 
are highly gifted with the power of seeing analogies. In 
a succeeding chapter it will be shown at some length how 
largely all our thinking depends on the power to recog- 
nize the qualities which things have in common. Bain 
and others have pointed out that a far-reaching power to 
see likenesses among things that are apparently unlike 
is the foundation of what is called genius. Without this 
unifying power there can be no breadth and depth of 



88 THE ART OF STUDY 

mental grasp. Many of our figures of speech are based 
on the recognition of similarities between things; our 
power to classify objects of knowledge and reason con- 
cerning them is based on this power of mental associa- 
tion. 

But intellectual accuracy and soundness of judgment, 
the authoritativeness of our knowledge, depend on clear 
discrimination of things among which there are but slight 
dift'erences. Locke has written strong words about the 
difference between wit and judgment which every student 
would do well to ponder. Wit is based on the recogni- 
tion of similarities. Sound judgment is not based on 
figures of speech; it is not misled by similarities; does 
not confuse things that are in any respect unlike. The 
recognition of similarities among things leads to power- 
ful mental grasp and to poetic beauty. But truth is 
built on discrimination. It is thinking of things as 
being alike which are in reality not alike that leads into 
errors and blocks intellectual progress. Accurate scien- 
tific work, scholarly translation of a language, powerful 
literary expression are all dependent upon the power of 
discrimination. What are refinement of manner, liter- 
ary taste, scientific penetration? Not merely the power 
to see resemblances, but the power to make acute dis- 
crimination among things that look alike to others, and 
to act correctly on such facts. 

Some people seem to have a native "feeling" for 
what is correct, in manners, literary style, forms of ex- 
pression, conduct. It looks as if such a power must be 



DISCRIMINATION 89 

born with the individual; that it cannot be trained. 
Doubtless as Tristram Shandy was a better logician with- 
out schooling than many highly trained scholars were, 
so many men and women are by nature gifted with great 
powers of discrimination. But all men are possessed 
of capabilities in this respect which are but little if at 
all developed. 

The most worthless kind of knowledge that one can 
have about things is such as this: that there is a differ- 
ence between two words or between two trees, without 
one's being able to tell what that difference is. The only 
remedy for such a state of things is comparison, by which 
two things or ideas are brought together and examined 
at the same time, for the purpose of finding out in what 
they are alike and in what they differ. The trouble with 
most of our knowledge is that it has been gathered up 
in a miscellaneous way in the course of years without 
conscious effort to emphasize the differences between 
things. 

There are at least two ways of doing everything. 
And one very dry way to study words is to sit down and 
study column after column of them in a formal way. 
But the practice of purposely comparing words, in the 
study of languages, for example, in order to learn exactly 
how they differ from each other, so that the exactly fit- 
ting word may always be used, changes the whole char- 
acter of a student's knowledge. That is what makes 
him an expert, whether he is dealing with words or trees 
or historical facts. No matter how incomplete one's 



90 THE ART OF STUDY 

knowledge may be at a given time, the process is right, 
and more work of the same kind will make it perfect. 

The word expert carries with it such a strong com- 
mercial flavor that one might hesitate to use it in a dis- 
cussion intended for those who are seeking culture. But 
what is skill in judging music, art, or literature? On 
what is the skill dependent that can produce a perfect 
symphony or painting or poem? Great power to dis- 
criminate tones and colors and forms of expression that 
are not recognized as distinct at all by the mass of men. 
The habit of very careful comparison and long training 
in distinguishing things that are only minutely differ- 
ent, are what make the expert in all departments of life. 

The last degree of expertness may deal with differ- 
ences so minute that they cannot be described. They 
seem to be a matter of indefinable feeling. The wool- 
buyer may be able to detect whether a bale of wool has 
been water-logged by means of a rope with one end fixed 
in the bale and the other end floating in a creek. But, 
however able he may be to detect fraud, the finest and 
best work is done in judging real wool — recognizing the 
minute differences that nature herself has produced on 
the backs of sheep. The differences that he can detect 
may baffle his powers of description, but he gives correct 
judgment. This power is extremely slow of growth. But 
the student inevitably acquires it if his process is correct. 
If he takes the time to make careful comparison and dis- 
cover the exact nature of the differences between things, 
the knowledge thus gained will be his firm friend, and he 



DISCRIMINATION 91 

will develop, in large measure, that tact in conduct, apt- 
ness in the use of words, tremendous power of interpre- 
tation, which seem to be gifts bestowed by nature only 
on the favored few. 

As has already been said, discrimination must cease 
somewhere; and in this matter we must in the end be 
guided by what our interests are, by what we have at 
stake. During my college days it would have been folly 
for me to discriminate the sounds that my feet made on 
the sidewalk at every step. I could have no interest in 
such a thing. But the old blind man that trod for years 
the same plank walk that I did, had a vital interest in 
the sound of every foot-fall. He could walk blocks at 
a stretch without using his cane; and when he reached 
the corner at which he turned homeward he could stop 
within a foot of the center of the walk, wheel on his heel 
and go home without using his cane at all. Blind-folded 
I would have been perfectly helpless; but he distin- 
guished among sensations of the very existence of which 
I was unaware. If I had used my powers in my college 
work as effectively as he used his in the business of get- 
ting home. I should have been not only a better, but a 
different kind of scholar. 

It is no small part of the student's work to learn to 
discriminate habitually, by means of active scrutiny, be- 
tween things whose' differences are small. He is not 
at liberty to be content, like other men, with differences 
that are so great that they force themselves upon him; 
he is under the moral necessity of looking for and hunt- 



92 THE ART OF STUDY 

ing out the smaller differences between things and con- 
sciousl}" stating those differences to himself in the in- 
terests of accuracy and sound knowledge. 

But it must not be forgotten that mere ability to 
recognize differences between things does not make a 
good thinker. It is only one of the conditions of sound 
thinking. A man may have very acute powers of dis- 
crimination and yet lack, in large measure, the com- 
panion power of associating things that are really alike 
and drawing general truths from those likenesses. A 
mind in which the power of discrimination outweighs 
that of association is likely to be loaded with a vast quan- 
tity of accurate details, cyclopedic in its nature, but 
without much power of organizing this vast store of 
knowledge and drawing general truths from it. The 
mind, on the other hand, gifted with great powers of as- 
sociation, but deficient in discrimination, is likely to be 
speculative, unhampered by the quality of its facts. It 
will revel in flights of reasoning and its work will look 
very brilliant ; but the results will not bear investigation, 
they will not stand long in the place that belongs to truth. 

What discrimination at its best actually does is to 
furnish valuable material for the powers of association 
to work upon. Merely recognizing that things are differ- 
ent leads to nothing. Unless the power of detecting 
differences between things is accompanied by good power 
of detecting resemblances among things, there will be 
but little power of constructive thought, of generaliza- 
tion, no sweep of conception, no grasp of large and gen- 



DISCRIMINATION 93 

eral problems. The two powers are really reciprocal. 
In the well-trained mind there is constant interaction 
between the two. As soon as discrimination has taken 
a strong hold of a new fact and clearly revealed its na- 
ture, — as soon as it is recognized to be different from 
the other things with which it is associated and is sep- 
arated from them in thought, the mind immediately 
seeks to bring this new fact into a mental association 
with other things that are known to be like it. 

From my early childhood black-bird concerts have 
had a strange charm for me. I had never analyzed the 
"concert music" and discriminated the different sounds 
that make it up. Later in life I learned, somewhat to 
my astonishment, that crows, black-birds and blue-jays 
are all very closely related, and belong among the true 
singing birds. The humor of the latter fact drew my 
attention to the sounds they made, and I discovered a 
remarkable likeness in their ordinary call-notes. After 
that they all cawed, only in different keys. Thenceforth 
their music as well as their anatomy testified that they 
were relatives. 

But the black-bird concert, with its mysterious, out- 
landish charm still stood out by itself. It was only long 
afterwards, when the close relationship of the birds and 
the similarity of their calls had grown perfectly familiar, 
that I undertook to analyze it. As soon as I began to 
listen for the separate sounds that go to make the con- 
cert, not only the quantity of sound, but the remarkable 
double nature of the music, became impressive. Com- 



94 THE ART OF STUDY 

mingled with the liquid, musical whistle is the plain old 
black-bird caw, I inmiediately associated this element 
with other things that were like it, and so emphasized the 
difference between the two notes that enter into the con- 
cert. 

This illustration seems strangely chosen; but I do 
not expect others to become bewitched by black-bird con- 
certs because I have been. The illustration was selected 
for its simplicity; and it shows clearly the effect of edu- 
cation on the power of discrimination. I did not analyze 
the music of the black-bird until I was fairly well 
equipped with a variety of information bearing on the 
general subject of those birds. It was only after the 
"concert" had been surrounded by organized knowledge 
and it was left as an island of unreduced ignorance, that 
it was subjected to analysis. The extent to which we are 
willing to isolate one element from the others connected 
with it, and group it with things that are like itself, de- 
pends on the general range of our knowledge. The ac- 
curacy, clearness and variety of what we already know 
determines the extent to which the mind will "pick out'^ 
new materials and bring them into old groups. 

The mind that has cultivated a well-balanced com- 
bination of patient discrimination and bold association 
and general reasoning, is in possession of the power to 
hunt the truth and mercilessly verify its results. It must 
be listened to; its work will last. Even though time 
should prove that some or even many of its results are 
wrong, yet the process of reaching those results is correct 



DISCRIMINATION 95 

and they mark a necessary stage in the growth of later 

and better knowledge. More of the same kind of ivork 
will remove the error and reveal the truth. 



96 THE ART OF STUDY 



CHAPTER X. 

association: illustrations. 

Probably every normal person has at some time 
stopped short in a train of thought and asked himself 
why his thoughts have succeeded each other in the order 
in which they have come to him. Whether in reverie or 
a hard and long-continued course of reasoning, each 
thought, in dying away, gives birth to the next one. The 
mind passes, almost instantaneously, by apparently the 
wildest and most unaccountable dashes, from one end of 
the universe to the other, and brings together in thought 
things that of themselves seem to furnish no apparent 
reason for being thought of together. But there is a 
fundamental mental principle that governs the association 
of ideas that succeed each other throughout our waking 
hours. Why it should be as it is with our minds, is a 
problem that has presented itself for solution to philoso- 
phers since the time of Aristotle; and doubtless ages be- 
fore his time, the skin-clad shepherd, in some reflective 
moment, asked himself the same question. 

It is not the purpose of this book to discuss the ques- 
tion from a psychological point of view ; but to accept 
the principle of mental association as we find it, — abso- 
lutely master of all our thoughts — and to draw out a little 



ASSOCIATION : ILLUSTRATIONS 97 

its bearings on the problem of education from the stu- 
dent's point of view. Each one can find in his own ex- 
perience the best examples to illustrate the workings of 
the principle. 

One cloudy, cold and wet winter evening, I stood 
outdoors in the depressing twilight in a mountain-girded 
valley twenty miles from the Pacific, and heard the sul- 
len roar of the unseen ocean. It was the kind of deep, 
resistless, muffled sound, that seemed to mutter more 
than speak of mightier things that it might do. That 
sound at another time would probably have recalled 
visions of cliff and beach and surf and shells and tide- 
pools and sea-urchins in their little pot-holes in the solid 
rock and the odor of the sea. But none of these things 
returned to consciousness. The muffled roar brought 
back another majestic sound. I had seen Niagara Falls 
on a sunny summer noon-day, when water and mist and 
sky were bright, and there was no suggestion of gloom. 
The roar of the ocean had called up something that was 
like itself. 

But why, when the roar of Niagara had been sum- 
moned across almost three thousand miles of intervening 
plains and mountains and across the intervening years, 
did that deep eternal monotone bring back with it all 
the other qualities of that piece of Nature's wonder work 
and even the thoughts inspired in me at sight of them? 
Why did the rushing and glinting and falling of the 
water come back with the roar? And after them all, 
why did memory drag out again the solemn thoughts of 



98 THE ART OF STUDY 

eternity and almighty power that had heaved through me 
in that wonderful hour? There I stood, oblivious to the 
cold and darkening gloom, and revelled once more in 
thought of the beautiful and sublime. 

Why, in less than a minute, did this great complex 
of vision and feeling — the steadiness of this mighty thing 
and the sunny beauty of the day — allow me to be carried 
on a flash of thought to a terrible night in the moun- 
tains, when almighty power seemed to have turned an- 
archist, when darkness and fog and rain depressed the 
soul, when shock drove sleep away, when mountain-split- 
ting thunder made the heart stand still and violated all 
the laws of order by refusing to die away, when Echo, 
that only murmured and babbled in the sunshine, growled 
and roared incessantly in a voice that knew no modula- 
tion, until the cliffs above us quivered with excitement? 

The ocean's roar recalled something else that was 
like it. This law of association lij similarity lies at the 
root of the mind's most wonderful work. "Birds of a 
feather flock together" is a law of our thinking; and 
maybe a law controlling the forces of the universe. It 
mil bear much thinking about. 

When once the sound of Niagara had possession of 
the mind, instead of recalling immediately another sound, 
it recalled all the other experiences that the mind went 
through at the time that sound was heard — not other 
similar sounds, but entirely different things, sunshine, 
flashing water, mist and rainbow, and musings on power 
and eternity. It may be laid down as another mental 



ASSOCIATION: ILLUSTRATIONS 99 

commonplaoe that things and qualities of every nature, 
no matter how different from each other they may be, 
when once they are experienced together, will ever after tend 
to come back in memory together. This law of associa- 
tion hy contiguity causes all the elements of an experi- 
ence, no matter how unlike they are, to come trooping 
back together, and usually in the order in which they 
were first experienced. As soon as I thought of ^iaga- 
ra^s roar, all the other things that I saw and heard and 
thought and felt at the same time came back until the 
whole scene stood pictured before me again. 

Then suddenly the noise of the Falls recalled the roar 
of a mountain storm; but no sooner had association by 
similarity brought back the latter, then association by 
contiguity recalled all the attendant circumstances that 
combined with the noise to make up a model storm. And 
so our thought trips on from point to point of our old 
experiences; and all the time by the law of contiguity, 
the mind keeps the order of experience that nature gave, 
and by the law of similarity creates out of the chaos of 
experience an order all its own. 

It is within the range of possibility that, when mem- 
ory takes up the thread of former experience, one should 
follow exactly the course of the former experience, re- 
calling every attendant detail minutely and in its proper 
place. Memory then would only drift once more exactly 
where the thought had traveled before. There is a type 
of mind that tends to be thus obedient to the law of as- 
sociation by contiguity. But by itself, it represents only 
L.ofC. 



100 THE ART OF STUDY 

a lower type of mental power. I might, obedient to the 
law of similarity, when I see a crawling ant, recall in 
dull succession all the experiences of ants that I had 
ever had, and all in their proper order. But it would be 
a stupid piece of work and withal both unpleasant and 
unprofitable. What actually happens is, that a normal 
mind, in passing from one object of thought to another 
under the law of association by similarity and contiguity, 
selects the experiences that were pleasant or impressive, 
that for some reason or other, we cannot always tell 
why, have a sort of tone that distinguishes them from all 
the rest, and which at the same time have a pertinent 
bearing upon what is at the time passing in the mind. 

What actually happens, in my own case, when the 
sight of a line of black ants starts a train of thought at 
all, is that I recall a terrible battle between black ants 
that I witnessed once in a forest. The grim and silent 
warriors fought till the old log and the ground around 
it were strewn with antennae, legs, heads and beheaded 
bodies. I did not see a coward among them. Every one 
held on until he died; and even the jaws of his dissevered 
head stayed locked where he had bitten last, so that his 
enemy still carried his head around as an unwelcome 
adornment. 

The other thousands of droves of black ants that I 
have seen in my life are apparently lost to memory; I 
cannot recall the most of them; all there is left is an 
indefinite impression of the frequency of such a sight 
and of the numbers usually seen. The reason this par- 



ASSOCIATION: ILLUSTRATIONS 101 

ticular scene associates itself so commonly with any drove 
of black ants that I may see, is that this experience was 
new to me, and striking and terrible in a way. T had 
often wished to see such a battle; had often read about 
the doughty little warriors. I was mentally prepared to 
be interested; I was in a state of expectation, and ob- 
served all the details. My mind worked vigorously on 
the subject as the fight went on. The impression it left 
was unusual and vivid. 

The sight of a red ant much more surely associates 
with itself another experience. It always recalls the 
little red ants that crawled at their leisure through my 
mustache while I tried in vain to sleep on a hillside on 
the North Fork of the Stanislaus River in California. 
The reason this particular scene occupies the right of 
way in the association of my ideas is because it was so 
unique and impressive. I did not dare to kill the too 
familiar ants, because they were more malodorous in 
death than they were in life. As soon as the law of 
similarity has done its work and called up the hillside 
ants, the law of contiguity is just as effective in bring- 
ing back all the circumstances of that memorable scene. 
Every item in it was new and impressive on its own ac- 
count. The uncanny ants recall our constant slipping 
down the hillside in our blankets in spite of the bed of 
boughs; and then comes back the thought of the donkey, 
who ate patiently of a rotten log because the sheep had 
passed that way to the high Sierras, and where the sheep 
have been not even a donkey can live in comfort. And 



102 THE ART OF STUDY 

her peculiar tastes made another deep impression. I had 
often driven cows and colts through the deep Wisconsin 
snows to browse the buds of the new-made brush heaps. 
So we carried her maple leaves on broken boughs ; but she 
preferred the rotten log. 

All the details of that night's experience were new 
and striking, and so they cling tenaciously together in 
memory; even the little incidents of salt and pepper at 
the supper-making drop into place in the vivid procession 
of images. 

It is important to realize that the question as to what 
experiences, what knowledge, shall be recalled and be- 
come associated with what we happen at present to be 
thinking about, depends on how that knowledge or experi- 
ence was first acquired. The student need not now 
trouble himself about the "poet's eye, in a fine frenzy 
rolling" and seeing similarities and connections among 
things not given to common mortals to see. He needs to 
impress himself with the fact that those things are most 
likely to serve him afterward under the law of associa- 
tion of ideas, which had most interest for him and im- 
pressed him most deeply at the time that they were ex- 
perienced. 

There is one other case of association which can be 
distinguished from the two that have been described. 
Socrates gave an independent position to the principle 
of association by contrast. Our common speech, and the 
highest types of literature are filled with the idea of con- 
trast and antithesis. We think, as it were, in extremes. 



ASSOCIATION: ILLUSTRATIONS 103 

Angels recall devils; good recalls evil; bitter and sweet 
are constant associates in our thought. The "neutral 
tints/^ in colors, tastes or morals, do not seem striking 
enough to be easily associated in thought or to appeal to 
us. It would seem that things that represent extremes 
of difference are habitually thought of together and that 
association by similarity breaks down badly at this point. 

But analysis of the subject has shown that the prin- 
ciple of contrast really comes under the head of associa- 
tion by similarity. Angels and devils are only the two 
extremes of the same hind of thing. Bitter and sweet 
are the two extremes of taste. In Pharaoh's dreams the 
seven fat and the seven lean kine, and the seven full and 
seven thin ears of corn betokened seven years of plenty 
and seven more of famine. The figures of the dreams 
are true to the fundamental principle of similarity. 
There is no chaotic mental confusion of years of plenty 
with thin ears of corn. And where the contracts are 
made, it is the two extremes of the same kind of thing 
that are involved. The seven fat with the seven lean 
Icvne; the seven full with the seven thin eai^s of corn. 
The mind, when it deals with contrasts, grasps, as it were, 
the two ends of all such series. Even then the points of 
similarity are emphasized. No contrast is drawn between 
things that are fundamentally unlike. We are not in- 
clined to associate together by contrast, hot and yellow, 
goodness and the color blue. 

Duns and powder, explosion and death have become 
closely associated in our minds, and we conduct ourselves 



104 THE ART OF STUDY 

circumspectly. We are so sure that guns do not go about 
alone, that if we hear the report of a rifle we invariably 
look for the man. Certain things have always occurred 
together in our experience, and we make the grave as- 
sumption that they will always occur together. When 
one of them comes to our attention we immediately as- 
sume the existence of the rest. If I see a dog's tail dis- 
appearing around the corner of the house I "know" there 
is a dog at the other end of it. I have seen myriads of 
dogs' tails, but never a tail traveling independently. One 
tail, one dog. Invariable association of the two in my 
experience has made the association of the two in my 
thoaght inevitable. My eyes supply the tail, my mind 
supplies the dog to complete the association. 

This is the power by means of which we are con- 
stantly piecing out our imperfect knowledge. We act 
all the time upon our confidence that such associations as 
we have become acquainted with, are permanent and re- 
liable. I hear a thud on the porch, and invariably act 
in response to it, because it means that my morning paper 
has come. The dull thud has meaning only because it is 
associated in my mind with so many other things. That 
is why a single sound may determine my occupation for 
half an hour to come. The law of association gives 
all their meaning to otherwise stupid facts. Because this 
is so, and because the student's present business in life 
is to train his mental powers, a little attention to this lav/ 
of association and its bearing on the quality of our knowl- 
edge, is of very great importance. All his years of edu- 



ASSOCIATION: ILLUSTRATIONS 105 

< 

cation are, in theory at least, a longdrawn voluntary 
effort to improve the quality of his mental action, and to 
secure accurate and valuable knowledge. 

Now the way in which the different items of his 
knowledge shall forever be associated together, depends 
on the way he consciously arranges them when he first 
comes in contact with them. He is deliberately accumu- 
lating material and power for future use ; and it behooves 
him to remember that the law of association will faith- 
fully reproduce his accumulations, whether their first ar- 
rangement was perfect or utterly faulty. Where empha- 
sis is laid in the beginning, there will be the facts which 
force their way into the memory on the slightest provo- 
cation. Flaws and errors come with what is valuable. 
We never recall everything. Some facts and experiences 
will always hold the right of way at the expense of others 
that are bound to lose their little vitality in the stalls of 
memory, until they seem to be hopelessly lost. It is 
vitally important that the student shall deliberately and 
always associate the items of his knowledge in such an 
order that they will teach him the most truth afterwards, 
^^unch" them in such an arrangement that when one is 
recalled it will always recall the rest. This topic will be 
treated more fully under Memory. 

Now what is it that determines which of a thousand 
possible trains of thought shall become the actual one? 
We can at least lay our fingers on some of the elements 
of the answer. Thought, as it moves along, passes al- 
ways to the facts that for some reason or other are the 



106 THE ART OF STUDY 

most impressive. These are not only easily acquired, but 
easily retained and recalled; they seem to return almost 
without invitation. Others^, which can be recalled only 
after the most careful mental "search," are not likely to 
play a dominant part in coloring and directing the course 
of our thought. 

It may be laid down as a fundamental characteristic 
of both men and animals that we are most interested in 
a thing while it is new to us. That is when it makes its 
lasting impression. It is Nature's way of teaching her 
children to be careful and to make each new item of 
knowledge effective. Which of our past experiences shall 
be called upon and associated with a present experience, 
in what direction our thought shall run when it is stimu- 
lated into activity by a present incident, depends not only 
on the vividness of particular past impressions, but also 
upon the general drift of our more recent thinking. 

In the year 1900 I sat in the sun and listened to a 
fine technical description of a repeating rifle that I held 
in my hands. The rifle made the speaker think of the 
coming vacation and the deer that he would slay; for he 
was a Ximrod, with more heart for the forest than for 
his books. There was no great probability that the pres- 
ence of the gun would lead his mind very far away from 
the thought of the northern hill forests. They had the 
right of way. 

Before October 11, 1899, that rifle would surely have 
set me thinking about the Chippewa sub-chief who in 
the depths of a Wisconsin forest, walked up to me as I 



ASSOCIATION: ILLUSTRATIONS 107 

sat at the foot of a tree^ and offered to sell me an old 
Phoenix rifle for "six or five or four dollars/^ But in 
1900, even long after the British had occupied the two 
South African Republics, my whole thought was often 
given to the effect of modern guns on human liberty. At 
tliat particular time, therefore, the rifle on my knees at 
once associated itself in thought with the Boer war and 
the stout resistance that the handful of mounted farmers 
was making to one of the biggest and proudest armies on 
earth. It led me to think once more that pipe-clay and 
uniforms and social distinction are no longer either neces- 
sary or desirable equipments of a fighting man ; that the 
fighting unit would thereafter always be a man, a horse 
and a repeating rifle. I thought of this, too, which must 
often have impressed itself on many British minds, that 
they had met the Dutch before, and who could know but 
they might have to do it again ? Then I thought of how 
the final stand in the struggle for human liberty is al- 
ways made outdoors in the everlasting hills. Boers, 
Cubans, Swiss and Welsh and Maccabees came back in 
thought because it was the year nineteen hundred when 
I looked at the repeating rifle. The train of thought 
which the rifle would awaken was determined by what I 
had been thinking about recently. 



108 THE ART OF STUDY 



CHAPTEK XL 

association: the original order of experience. 

It has been said in the previous chapter that there 
are two strikingly different ways in which the mind may 
re-consider the knowledge which it possesses, and the 
experiences that it has had. There are two different 
orders or arrangements : the order of experience and the 
order of reason. In the former arrangement the law of 
association hy contiguity brings back everything to the 
mind in its original setting. Each thing recalls what 
was next to it or associated with it in time or place. All 
things that were together once in experience remain to- 
gether in the memory. If this were the only way in 
which the facts of our lives could be associated, our 
"thinking" could never be anything more than a pale, 
emaciated repetition of the past. There could be no new 
combinations in our thought. 

But even the dullest normal mind is capable of tak- 
ing its past experience to pieces and bringing together in 
thought the things that are in some respects alike. Two 
experiences may be thought of in succession, whether they 
occurred originally in two successive hours of the same 
day or were separated by a space of twenty years. It is 



ASSOCIATION: ORDER OF EXPERIENCE 109 

their likeness to each other that causes them to be 
brought together in thought. 

These two ways of associating the objects of knowl- 
edge or experience distinguish two radically different 
types of mind. Every mind possesses both these means 
of association. But some minds possess in a very marked 
degree the power of associating objects according to their 
likeness; while others seem to plod along the old ruts 
that were worn by the original experiences. 

The well-balanced mind, which keeps a strong hold 
of its past, in which experiences remain distinct and or- 
derly and furnish vivid, accurate and complete images 
when they are recalled, and which at the same time pos- 
sesses in a marked degree the power of rearranging the 
facts of knowledge and experience and organizing them 
into groups of lilce hinds upon which the reasoning pow- 
ers can be brought to bear, possesses in its mental move- 
ment the two kinds of association in a mutually helpful 
relation. 

In order to make clear how the two kinds of asso- 
ciation constantly intermingle in the course of thought, 
I shall draw further upon personal experiences. The 
reader himself can supply instances that will suit his 
purposes better than any examples that can be drawn 
from the mental experiences of others. Such processes 
are going on in everybody's mind all the time. 

Whenever I hear or see the word porcupine I imme- 
diately think of one or another of several experiences. 
But when one has once returned to memory, I am likely 



110 THE ART OF STUDY 

after dwelling upon it a little, to pass to the next, until 
all the important porcupine experiences of my life have 
been recalled. 

The sight or the sound of the word is utterly unlike 
the animal it stands for. The only reason why the word 
recalls the animal is because that particular word and 
that particular animal have always been associated by 
contiguity. When one recurs to the mind it brings back 
the other, because they have been in mind together be- 
fore. The word always calls up some individual porcupine, 
and usually the first to respond is the big female that my 
younger brothers and I smoked out of a hollow tree in 
the river bottoms of our native haunts one bright, cold, 
winter morning. As soon as I think of this animal the 
whole flood of details returns. Each item takes its place 
where it belongs ; but no two of them are alihe. Memory 
brings back the bits of nibbled bark on the snow at the 
bases of the neighboring trees, by means of which we 
located the animal. Then comes the hollow tree itself; 
the failure of our last match and our final success at mak- 
ing a fire by shooting a gun into a carefully heaped pile 
of dry leaves and whittled shavings ; the patience required 
to nurse the sparks into a flame; our cold hands; the 
slowness of the smoking process because there was no hole 
above to allow a draft to pass up the tree; the tantaliz- 
ing way in which the porcupine frequently backed down 
near the opening to get a whiff of fresh air ; the final suc- 
cessful struggle ; our careful dissection of the animal af- 
ter we got home; and the derisive remarks that our sis- 



ASSOCIATION: ORDER OF EXPERIENCE 111 

ters have hurled at us these many years since then. 
These items never fail to come back together. But up to 
this point the association has been entirely one of con- 
tiguity. N"o one of the details is like any of the rest. 

But once reminded of porcupines, I often stay on the 
porcupine trail. Association by similarity brings back an- 
other porcupine: a scene in which I saw a young brute 
dash a bucket of scalding water on the poor beast as it 
ran for its life, and heard its horrible, long-drawn squawk 
of anguish. Every detail of this scene comes back, con- 
trolled by the law of contiguity. Then the law of asso- 
ciation by similarity carries me on to a pest of porcupines. 

Way back in the "woods," where farms were new and 
few, men were building a dam and a saw-mill on a little 
stream. I was teaching school, and often walked three 
miles after school for the pleasure of seeing another set 
of faces and watching the men work. The woods were 
full of porcupines, and they had an overmastering pas- 
sion for the handles of tools — axes, picks, spades — and of- 
ten gnawed them nearly in two at the places where the 
soiled and sweaty hands of men had rubbed, and left a 
taste that those prickly wanderers could not forego. 
Having a desire to help rid the neigbborhood of the pest, 
I always cut a walking stick of hazel or water-ibeech and 
often despatched three or four porcupines on a single 
trip. In the cases of some of these experiences I can 
after all these years, recall the minutest details — how the 
animals curled up for self-defense and even the little 
sticks and brush and logs that lay around. When the 



112 * THE ART OF STUDY 

"memory-^ of these things ceases to be interesting the law 
of similarity brings back another porcupine — one that I 
never saw. Our dog had had an injudicious fight with 
him one night and brought home both his jaws full of 
quills. His gaping mouth, our midnight labors to re- 
lieve him, and his almost human moans are all kept to- 
gether by the law of contiguity. 

Similarity again brings back porcupines — this time 
imaginary ones ; the porcupine trail of my thought usually 
ends in my early childhood at a time when I had never 
yet seen a porcupine but had heard and imagined much 
about the animal. There was an unoccupied farm near 
a place where we often went for raspberries. Some 
friends a little older and much wiser than myself firmly 
believed and taught me to believe that on the farther 
edge of that field the porcupines sat in the black and 
blasted trees and threw their quills with their tails at 
passers-by many rods away on the road. The farm, the 
road, the distant trees, which I never ventured to ap- 
proach, the imagined shape and size of the animals, the 
very thoughts and feelings about that, my childhood 
bugaboo, come back in a vivid train. The mighty power 
of association by contiguity brings back the items in 
great sheaves, just as they were bound together in the 
original experience. 

At this point the porcupine trail ends in the trees, 
and the law of similarity, taking another tack, tows my 
thoughts along to the other vagaries of my childhood. 
There is thus in our common, unguided thought a con- 



ASSOCIATION: ORDER OF EXPERIENCE 113 

stant succession of associations, some sort of similarity 
carrying the thought across the tracks of experience from 
one to another that is like it; and the bond of contiguity 
calling up details to fill out the picture of each experience. 

Association of ideas by contiguity not only makes 
memory and an intellectual life possible ; it tends to make 
us its slaves. If we were to change our terms a little we 
would find ourselves again discussing the subject of habit. 
Not only are things recalled in the groupings in which 
they originally occurred, but usually in the very same or- 
der. This is especially true of things that have been fre- 
quently recalled in a given order. The sight or sound 
of the letter a recalls h, and h recalls c. But c never 
spontaneously arouses thought of h; and the bond of asso- 
ciation is not from h to a. It is hardy possible to realize 
how vastly important this tendency of mind is. Without 
it there would be inevitable mental chaos. Attention is 
elsewhere called to the fact that the letters of the alphabet 
can be arranged in so many different ways that a hundred 
million men working steadily for a hundred million years, 
and writing each forty sheets a day and on each sheet 
forty different arrangements, would not at the end of 
that time have exhausted all the possible arrangements. 

Now it is possible to imagine a condition of mind 
in which experience could not be recalled in the original 
order. But mental chaos would be the result. There 
would be no stability of knowledge and mental progress 
would be impossible. So strong is this tendency to asso- 
ciate things in the order in which they were first learned 



114 THE ART OF STUDY 

or experienced that we are rarely tempted to try any 
other way. If the effort is made at all, we pitch upon the 
reverse order; we say the alphabet backwards. This is 
the next easiest thing because the letters retain their 
same relative positions. There are other, more sensible 
arrangements of the alphabet than the one we all have 
learned, but the scientific superiority of such an arrange- 
ment is of no help to us unless we have learned to asso- 
ciate the letters in the new order. 

What is true of the alphabet is true of the multiplica- 
tion table. Each item recalls the next in the order in 
which they were first learned. The same is true of the 
declension of a noun or the conjugation of a verb. If 
anything is thought of, it only recalls the part that im- 
mediately followed it in the original arrangement. 

How does the mind "find" a fact that it has "lost"? 
By hunting for it among the facts that were known to be 
its original associates. If an umbrella is left somewhere 
on a shopping tour the owner seeks first of all to recall 
to mind the last place where he is sure he had it. At 
every stopping place, by diligent search the umbrella can 
be made to re-appear among its associates. Its presence 
there is connected with everything that was done at that 
point. By and by a place is reached where the umbrella 
no longer forms a part of the recalled experience. Now 
vigorous attention to details will soon reveal the place 
where it disappeared. So small a matter as opening the 
door with the umbrella hand will show that it was gone 
when that place was reached. 



ASSOCIATION: ORDER OF EXPERIENCE 115 

What is true of a lost umbrella is true of any fact 
that we seek to recall. We call up all the facts with 
which it was associated, and they, by their combined in- 
fluence, bring back the fact that is sought. It will return 
almost involuntarily as a member of a g^roup, whereas a 
sheer effort to remember it might be forever in vain. 

Sometimes when in my boyhood, the herd had been 
started homeward on the trail, I would find a heifer miss- 
ing, and would worry over her absence. A long and anx- 
ious search was usually in vain. After some experience 
I learned that it was perfectly safe to leave such a heifer 
to her own wits, as long as I took care of her associates. 
Usually within five minutes she would gallop into the 
-herd and ^^athe herself in their companionship.". Her 
life could not be lived apart from them. And so of facts. 
No matter what sort of fact it may be, its old associates 
will drag it along with them. If they are all called in and 
kept before the thought it will soon be found among 
them. 



116 THE ART OF STUDY 



CHAPTEE XII. 

ASSOCIATION ACCORDING TO SIMILARITY. 

The power to reproduce the items of our knowledge 
and experience in the order in which they were first met 
cannot be over-rated. But no matter how powerfully a 
mind may be gifted in this respect, it will always remain 
a commonplace, prosaic, encyclopedic mind, unless it is 
likewise gifted with the power of association by similarity. 
While the former reproduces experience, the latter re- 
arranges knowledge in the order of reason, the order in 
which the higher activities of the intellect can be brought 
to play upon it. 

The poetic mind, that speaks in figures of speech, 
that makes those noiseless, ineffable allusions and the 
mighty sweeps of thought and feeling that make our 
spirits quiver in the reading, owes its power to the gift 
of association by similarity. Sooner or later every think- 
ing mind must organize its knowledge by bringing to- 
gether the things that are alike, and habitually thinking 
of them together. When we begin to think in similars 
it becomes possible to extract general truths from the 
jumble of facts. 

No two things are exactly alike in all respects. 
When the mind associates things together on the basis 



ASSOCIATION ACCORDING TO SIMILARITY 117 

of similarity, it selects only one or a few of the qualities 
of each object for comparison. In the rhyme beginning 

^'Twinkle, twinkle, little star," 
the association of the star and the diamond in the simile 
is based on the single quality of brightness. When a 
poetic author describes the mist and says that the young 
beech wept tears for its mother that fell in the storm, 
the likeness on which the figure of speech is based is 
only that of the trickling and dropping water. But an 
association like this is powerful by its suggestiveness. 
The association, though based on a single quality, when 
it is once made, opens the way to personification and a 
transfer of all the other human qualities usually asso- 
ciated with tears — darkness and death and woe — to the 
weeping tree. 

All human thought and speech are permeated by 
the principle of association by similarity. We con- 
stantly think and speak of things that are like the par- 
ticular thing we are dealing with. We cannot even say 
of a smiling baby that it has a rosy complexion, or of 
a fool that his conduct was asinine, or of a quarrel that 
there was a heated discussion, without making use of the 
principle. Not only adjectives but nouns owe their sug- 
gestiveness and usefulness to this kind of association. 
The indescribable and mysterious power of speech of 
poetic men, that quality of words which seems to open 
up dim and distant vistas of thought without giving ex- 
pression to it, is due in great part to intangible associa- 
tions by similarity. The dull associations of our com- 



118 THE ART OF STUDY 

monplace minds carry with them nothing of that unex- 
pressed suggestiveness. 

In more prosy matters, in history and science, we do 
not go so far afield in making comparisons, hnt even here 
the ablest minds possess a subtle power of penetration, 
insight that is akin to the poet's power, and is based on 
the ability to recognize resemblances between things that 
are far apart or seem very unlike. It is this subtle power 
of suggestion, which the principle of association accord- 
ing to similarities possesses, that makes the thought of 
some men so rich and fruitful. 

But what has all this to do with the student's busi- 
ness of acquisition? Everything. To my thinking, the 
student's most critical experience with any piece of 
knowledge is his first contact with it. What he does with 
it then determines forever its usefulness to him. If he 
takes the time to understand a fact thoroughly, and 
deliberately seeks to associate it at once with as many 
other related facts as possible, if it is made a part of a 
well-knit, valuable group of similar facts, it will forever 
be his faithful servant. Memory will find it no burden, 
because it is associated with its like, attention will hover 
over it, interest will cling to it for the sake of its asso- 
ciations. It will yield itself readily to the uses of reason, 
because, by being associated with related facts, it is in 
a position to corroborate the truth they have to tell. 

Of course, this all looks well on paper; but it takes 
time, and a great deal of it, to deal thus deliberately with 
every new fact. It requires reflection, comparison, the 



ASSOCIATION ACCORDING TO SIMILARITY 119 

exercise of all the intellectual powers upon each new fact 
as it comes up. It is a time-killing process. Time can 
be saved temporarily by merely memorizing the fact off 
hand without reflection, and without trying to get its 
bearings. 

Near a railway station at which a narrow-gauge and 
a broad-gauge road cross and run parallel for some dis- 
tance, I always took a lively interest in the race out of 
the station between the light narrow-gauge engine with 
its train of dainty cars and the more ponderous engine 
with its heavy broad-gauge load. Invariably the little 
engine crept ahead and soon was away in the lead, puffing 
defiance at its cumbersome rival. But the laws of physics 
were on the side of the broad-gauge engine. It lost in 
speed at first because it was gathering up momentum. 
Its loss was only apparent. Eod by rod it gained again 
and fairly rushed past the other train, leaving its spit- 
ting and coughing little rival hopelessly behind. Size 
and weight — its temporary handicap — constituted its per- 
manent superiority after the lapse of the first few min- 
utes. 

There are also a narrow-gauge and a broad-gauge way 
of coming in contact with and disposing of knowledge for 
future use. The constant temptation is to seek present 
effects and be content with them. But the time spent 
on each fact as it comes up gives permanent momentum 
to it. When once the momentum of carefully wrought- 
out knowledge is brought to bear on further acquisition, 
it simply overwhelms the more usual, time-serving 



120 THE ART OF STUDY 

method. I believe that the failure of the student to form 
the habit of associating every new fact carefully with 
others to which it is related is the most serious draw- 
back to intellectual progress. And I believe that he is 
an intellectual master who has once learned to seek the 
full significance and all the bearings of each new fact on 
the spot, and binds it up with its proper associates, so 
that it will forever after reappear in its right place, and 
reveal each time its proper message. He has entered 
within the inner veil of learning and intellectual power. 
The student who does not at least seek to develop this 
habit had better leave his studies and go to chasing the 
butterflies and bees for fun. 



ASSOCIATION: PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS 121 



CHAPTEE XIII. 

association: some practical applications. 

It was pointed out in a previous chapter that words 
are associated with the objects for which they stand by 
the principle of contiguity. As a rule, the word and the 
object have nothing in common. The word ox recalls the 
hollow-horned, cloven-hoofed, cud-chewing beast, because 
it has always been associated with these qualities, not be- 
cause it is like any or all of them. Words are the sym- 
bols used to represent things that are not present. 
Their function is to recall to mind the objects them- 
selves. 

Among all the associations which the intellect is 
called upon to form, the most commonplace and most 
important is the association between words and the ideas 
and objects for which those words stand. Our whole in- 
tellectual life is based on this system of symbols. If a 
word, whenever it is seen or heard, calls up vividly the 
object for which it stands — if there is a real association 
between the word and the object — the individual's 
thought will be vivid and substantial. 

N"ow a man of very poor imagination or thinking 
powers is often also a man of few words; and a man of 
great intellectual power is likely to have command of a 



122 THE ART OF STUDY 

large vocabulary, or, if his words are few, he is likely 
to be a master in their use. But it is not true that a 
man with a large vocabulary is necessarily a profound 
or vivid thinker. Training in the use of words alone 
does not improve the quality of one's thinking. Vitality 
of thought depends on the vitality of association between 
words and the things they stand for, or whether, when 
a word is seen or heard or thought about, it will actually 
recall the object. 

A great deal has been said about our modern wordy 
education; we multiply words and in doing so actually 
flush out of our minds what knowledge and power is 
already there. We tend to deal with words as we do 
with algebraic symbols — we combine and separate them 
in their grammatical relations with hardly a thought of 
what those words are standing for. This tendency to 
deal with the symbol and neglect, in our thinking, the 
thing for which the symbol stands, is largely due to the 
fact that we have words for very many things which we 
have never seen or experienced at all. With the great 
modern increase of books and periodicals this tendency 
threatens to become chronic. 

If one has actually heard or seen or felt something 
and then gets a word to serve as the symbol of it, the 
association between the word and the thing it stands for 
is likely to be very close. If the quantity of our actual 
experience can be made to keep some sort of pace with 
the growth of our vocabulary, there will be less danger of 
the failure to associate word and thing. So much of our 



ASSOCIATION: PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS 123 

knowledge comes to us at second hand that many of ns 
become mere traders in words. We think only words; 
and the things themselves, but poorly represented by con- 
fused imagery, tend to drop entirely out of consideration. 

A little attention to the symbols of arithmetic and 
algebra will make the subject plainer. Francis Gait on 
tells of a South African native who would give one sheep 
for two plugs of tobacco, but would not give two sheep 
for four plugs. He had a very practical interest in real 
things, but mathematical symbols were missing, so he 
could not carry his thought beyond the first simple step. 
A farmer who has five horses worth one hundred dollars 
apiece is likely to make full use of arithmetic. He has 
learned that 5x100=500 under all circumstances; it is al- 
ways true for him, no matter whether he is dealing with 
sheep or horses or pebbles on a beach. But his interest 
is likely to be always practical. He is not likely to con- 
tent himself wdth the thought that 5x100=500. For him 
the symbols of arithmetic will have horses and dollars as 
their material associates. 

But if, instead of being a farmer, one is merely 
studying arithmetic, real objects are no longer an im- 
portant consideration. 5 and 100 may stand for any ob- 
jects whatever; the relations between the quantities be- 
come the chief consideration. Then one begins to deal 
with numbers alone. Quite early in a child^s study of 
arithmetic it ceases to think of any objects that the 
numbers might represent. It is a dealer in numbers and 
not horses. 



124 THE ART OF STUDY 

In algebra the mathematician still further strips the 
process of concreteness. In the simple equation — 

X and y not only do not represent mate- 
rial objects, they do not even represent any particular 
numbers. They teach nothing about horses or sheep or 
numbers. They are symbols pure and simple, stripped of 
all connection with real things. In algebra the interest 
does not lie in the objects that a and &, x and y might 
represent; it is the relation hetween quantities that is the 
subject of study. The fact that the sum of two quanti- 
ties (whatever they may be) multiplied by itself equals 
the sum of the squares of those two quantities plus twice 
the product of the first by the second, is what is intended 
to be taught. Neither the x nor the y, nor their various 
combinations call up an image, because they are not 
symbols of anything in particular. Here we have a 
whole science which deals with mere symbols that have 
no association with real objects or ideas. The symbols 
are purposely stripped of all specific meaning, and when 
once the mind has begun to lay stress on the relations 
of increase, decrease and equality, it readily drops all 
thought of any real things for which the symbols might 
stand. It is this readiness of the mind to lose the asso- 
ciation between a word and the thing it stands for, and to 
deal with the word by itself, treating it as an indefinite 
S3rmbol which awaJcens no clear image, that makes a 
"wordy" education such a common and such a valueless 
thing. 



ASSOCIATION: PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS 125 

Just as soon as words are combined into sentences 
the mind has grammatical relations among words to 
deal with, as in algebra it deals with quantitative rela- 
tions. Now if the association between the words and the 
things they stand for is hazy and precarious, it is likely 
to be lost sight of altogether. The mind dwells on the 
grammatical relations and the words serve merely as in- 
definite symbols, like x and y. In this mental state one 
can read a whole page and when he reaches the bottom 
not know anything. This is, in short, accepting words as 
a substitute for a real knowledge of things. 

It is hardly fair to call this an intellectual crime, 
for crime is supposed to be an act contrary to the gen- 
eral practice of the community in which the act is done. 
When a whole community indulges in conduct so coarse 
that it is indefensible from our standpoint, and lacks 
certain powers and qualifications, we do not call it a com- 
munity of criminals. We only say it is at a low stage 
of civilization. By the same token, the defect that has 
been discussed is not an intellectual crime, for it is the 
common failing of reading communities. Words are 
multiplied and the growth of real knowledge and intel- 
lectual power come crawling slowly after. It is the easi- 
est thing to do at any given time, and the worst of all 
the halbits that the student can fall into. 

There is only one antidote for this constant menace 
to real culture, perpetual care that real things shall be 
the objects of thought. To one who has ever tasted an 
orange, the word has permanent, pleasant associations. 



126 THE ART OF STUDY 

they seem to become a part of it, so that the word itself 
almost seems to be pleasant. One experience with a 
skunk will make the name forever odious. It could never 
thereafter be used as a S3rmbol for pleasant objects of 
thought. In these cases, the association of word with 
the object it stands for is extremely close. 

But when we pass to the higher realms of thought 
and feeling, and speak of elegance and grandeur, many 
people who are perfectly familiar with the words cannot 
call up any definite ideas for which the words stand. 
They are merely indefinite symbols. What does grandeur 
mean to one who has never seen anything but the com- 
monplace ? Slight and superficial contact with facts and 
a large vocabulary produce a mental condition in which 
even the few real objects of experience can play no effec- 
tive part in thought. To a man who has had a wide ex- 
perience, grandeur calls up the chaotic bulk and beauty 
of a mountain range, the irresistible storm at sea, or the 
stately charm of a mighty temple. Only he who has 
seen and heard and felt things like those he reads about 
can keep a close association between words and things; 
because he has vivid and appropriate images stored away 
that are called up when the words are used. As soon as 
a student loses his contact with facts, his education be- 
comes a jugglery with empty symbols. 

While there is a great and fundamental difficulty in 
keeping up a vital association between words and the 
ideas they represent in studying in one's native tongue. 



ASSOCIATION: PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS 127 

this difficulty is many fold greater in the study of a 
foreign language. Let us begin with an actual case. 

An English-speaking student, in reading half a page 
of German, twice met the word Eisen (iron), once near 
the top of the page and again near the end of the pas- 
sage. He had "studied the lesson," but when he met 
the word at the top of the page he had forgotten its 
meaning and had to be told. Now merely being told 
a thing is the poorest way to learn it. So he immediately 
forgot again. When he met the word a second time, and 
did not know it, his attention was called to the same word 
at the top of the page. He rememhered then that he had 
seen it, but could not recall its meaning. This seems like 
an extreme case. But he was capable of doing good 
work as a student; and his case was very common, and 
illustrates a natural tendency. 

What was the matter? He failed to develop any 
kind of association for the word Eisen, when he first 
met it, and consequently it was a stranger to him every 
time he saw it. Let us see what even a student of ele- 
mentary German could have done with the word, if he 
had been willing to make the student's sacrifice. By 
close attention to the context in which the word first 
occurred he could have associated its meaning with all 
the rest of the words that formed its surroundings. He 
might be unable to tell what it meant the next time he 
met it, but by reverting to its first occurrence, he would 
have recalled its meaning without fail. This is a very 
common way of remembering things. 



128 THE ART OF STUDY 

A better way would have been to establish, by men- 
tal effort, a strong association between the German word 
Eisen and the English word iron. This could have been 
done in either of two ways : first, by the principle of con- 
tiguity, bringing the two words together and thinking of 
them together until one would recall the other; second, 
by the principle of similarity, making note of their resem- 
blances and differences. In this latter method we fall 
upon an example of how much easier it is to remember 
things in groups, how much easier it is to remember each 
fact as a member of a class than it is to remember it 
without such associations. 

By working upon the principle of similarity the stu- 
dent could instantaneously have made note of the fact 
that the German word has the letter 5 where the English 
word has r, and that the two words are otherwise alike 
in sound. That is to say, they are alike, with a differ- 
ence. This alone ought to make the word recall its 
proper English meaning in any connection. But that 
particular difference might be a troublesome little item 
to remember. Now if, instead of being content with 
what he could see at a glance, the student had had enough 
of the scholar's instinct to pursue the matter at all, he 
would have learned that the troublesome little difference, 
an s for an r, is itself an example of a whole class of like 
occurrences, that it illustrates the tendency to rhotacism, 
to change an s into an r in the Indo-European languages. 
Not only would it have been remembered forever that 
Eisen means iron; the strange relation of the two words 



ASSOCIATION: PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS 129 

to each other would have opened up a whole new field 
of associations. The mind would thenceforth be ready 
to notice a rhotacism wherever it occurred. Was and 
were, lose and forlorn in English, Eisen and ii'on, Hase 
and hare, in German to English; genus and genera in 
Latin, would sooner or later all fall into the new group 
of facts. Not only is a word more easily rememhered 
thus ; that is the way a scholar is made. Instead of hav- 
ing one paltry association by contiguity with the English 
word, the Germ^an word becomes the type of a whole 
class, the example of a linguistic tendency. 

It takes time and mental power to work this way. 
The sooner the fact is recognized and acted upon the 
better. There is no other right way. It is easier to 
brace up a rotten fence-post than it is to set a new one. 
But there is not much difference, aside from cuffs and 
collar, between a slovenly farmer and a slovenly student. 

There is another and still better way to deal with 
the word Eisen, and that is to form a strong mental asso- 
ciation between the word and the substance for which 
it stands. I have known little German children, who 
learned to speak English well in six weeks. Their vocab- 
ulary, at the end of that time, was not large, but the asso- 
ciations between words and the objects for which they 
stand was perfectly correct. They might have studied 
English out of books for two years and still be very un- 
certain about the meanings of their words. Their suc- 
cess and their certainty were due to the fact that they 
did not try to associate the new English words with the 



130 THE ART OF STUDY 

old, familiar German words. They saw the objects first 
and. then heard English words for them. They asso- 
ciated the new English words directly with the old, 
familiar things. 

• The reason why the great majority of able German, 
Greek and Latin scholars are utterly unable to speak 
the langnages of which they are in all other respects 
such perfect masters, is because they associate the for- 
eign words first with the words of their native tongue, 
and then the object itself is thought about in English. 
If they would do as the little immigrants did, associate 
the foreign words directly with the things for which 
they stand, aqiui with the liquid itself instead of the 
word water, they would talk the new language readily too. 
It is not easy at first to understand how much more 
readily words are remembered and how much more effec- 
tively they can be handled, if all their possible associa- 
tions are fully under control. It may seem as if the 
discussion were running to a fine point now instead of 
dealing with large and important questions of scholar- 
ship. But what has been said lies at the very founda- 
tion of good thinking. Any one can readily test the mat- 
ter in a simple way by copying a long quotation. In 
reading half of a sentence or long clause and then break- 
ing off to copy, the words convey no meaning; they are 
only an arbitrary succession of symbols, and are very 
hard to remember even till they can be written down. 
But if one reads the clause or sentence to a finish, so 
that the thought expressed in the words is grasped by the 



ASSOCIATION: PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS 131 

mind, the words are held in place by their association. 
One can remember more of them and remember them 
longer. 

Items that are in any way related help each other to 
be remembered. Thus, "Man is made for action^' can be 
fairly well remembered. But "Man is made for action, 
and not for subtle reasoning," has much more than double 
the power over the memory, for the two opposing 
thoughts constantly re-enforce each other. It is like 
standing on two legs instead of one. They re-enforce 
even by opposing each other. 

One of the chief tasks of the active mind is to ar- 
range things in such a way that the associations be- 
tween them will be strong and helpful. The usual ar- 
rangement of things is not always the most helpful one. 
Ordinarily, learning the names of the letters of the Ger- 
man alphabet is a confusing and uninteresting task. 
Many students never succeed completely. The differ- 
ences between the names of the same letters in the two 
languages seem to be haphazard. But if those differences 
are grouped into similaTities, they can all be learned cor- 
rectly and permanently in a few minutes. Thus : 
English de, ce, de, e, ge, pe, te, become, in German, M, tsa, 
da, a, ga, pa, ta; and can be learned almost in a trice, if 
the mind will only look for the similarities and see for 
itself that wherever the English has a final long e, the 
sound becomes in German a final long a (as pronounced 
in English). Wherever English has initial short e , Pf, 
ely em, en, es, the German has the same sound. Thus 



132 THE ART OF STUDY 

half of the alphabet is already disposed of;, and in such 
a way that it cannot be forgotten. The other letters can 
be dealt with partly in the same way and partly as 
anomalies. But even the latter are capable of partial 
association by careful comparison with the English. 
However imperfect such a help may be it nevertheless 
represents simply and clearly the principle of reducing 
the number of separate unrelated things to be learned 
by arranging them in groups and learning to work by 
means of the similarities on which the whole groups are 
based. 

Even among words themselves it is possible to make 
such groupings, which increase enormously the power 
of the mind to understand their meanings and remember 
them. Infer, prefer, ref^r, defer, confer, effefrent , circum- 
ference and all their relatives can be made useful members 
of the vocabulary if the common element (fero, to bear) 
is recognized and used in trying to understand them. 
This process, of course, at once involves a separate 
consideration of each of the Latin prefixes, circum, 
con, de, e, in, pre, re. When this is done there is already 
in the hands of the student a power which he cannot 
overestimate. Fero, duco, mitto, and every one of the 
other simple Latin words becomes tTie center of a whole 
group. 

It is not always desirable to follow such a line of 
thought to its limit whenever it comes up ; but it is emi- 
nently desirable that the mind should cultivate the habit 
of dealing with its knowledge in this way. 



ASSOCIATION: PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS 133 

Nothing can be more disastrous to healthy intellec- 
tual progress than the desultory, inaccurate, ineffective 
thinking built upon facts that are thrown together in 
the mind without care, that are not arranged in natural 
groups. One may know that Washington was born in 
1733 and that good potatoes can be grown on sandy 
soil; that red-squirrels can tell a good nut from a bad 
one and that Sir Galahad's strength was as the strength 
of ten because his heart was pure. Every one of these 
facts is interesting; but can these four facts be put 
together so that men can reason about them, and draw 
conclusions from them? The amount of truth that shall 
come into the possession of the mind depends on the way 
in which facts are associated with each other when they 
are first learned and whenever they are recalled. It is the 
vast consequences in the way of true and vigorous think- 
ing and larger grasp that follow upon careful and correct 
association of facts with each other, that have the deepest 
interest for the student, and render it worth his while to 
make the student's sacrifice of time and mental energy 
to secure such mental associations. 

How likely is it that the student will remember 
that DeGrama rounded Cape of Good Hope in 1497? 
An independent traveller is quite likely to lose his life 
in the hidden crevasses of a glacier, while a group of 
men connected by a rope gives assurance of almost perfect 
safety to every member. If by accident, one should fall, 
it is the rope that brings him back. The date of DeGama's 



134 THE ART OF STUDY 

feat is much more likely to be remembered if it is tied to 
the historical rope along with its associates. 

Even if the fact were remembered by itself, what 
would be the good of it? A student of my acquaintance 
once crammed for an examination and actually remem- 
bered by sheer force the date of the rounding of the Cape. 
But when asked to explain the historical significance 
of the act, he failed utterly. The fact was worthless 
to him. How much it would have meant to hi« thinking 
power, if he had been aware that it was the successful ter- 
mination of a long series of strenuous efforts to find a 
southeast passage to India, that it was the climax of a 
long drama of maritime enterprise which included inci- 
dentally the discovery of the Madeira and the Canary Isl- 
ands, Cape Verde and the Coast of Guinea. If his mind 
could have followed the successive expeditions as each 
in its turn pressed farther into the unknown South, if 
he had been impressed with the fact that all this enter- 
prise had been inspired by the desire to improve the 
commercial relations with India, he would have placed 
the bald and lonesome fact in its natural setting, associ- 
ated it with its own context. And facts in their proper 
setting are as eloquent as the words in an epic; by them- 
selves they are as dull as the same words in a dictionar_y. 
Forty tons of chain links are worth no more than any 
other old iron unless they are interlinked. The same is 
true of historioal or any other facts. 

Those who know most are best fitted to learn, 
chiefly because they have a large body of varied and well 



ASSOCIATION: PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS 135 

organized knowledge with which to connect each new 
fact. It finds itself at home at once in a vast array of 
closely related facts. Associations are easily formed for 
it. It strikes the mind at once as an individual member 
of an already well-known group, as a missing link in an 
otherwise complete chain of facts, as the effect of a known 
cause, or as the cause of a known effect, or as a long 
sought item of knowledge that completes the information 
on the subject to which it belongs. 

But the student does not need to know much before 
he begins to exercise his powers of association. To him 
that hath shall be given. It is to the first crude efforts 
that perfect skill owes its greatest debt. Deliberate 
choice of associations for each new fact, after careful 
consideration of its natural relationships, is what, in the 
long course of time, makes the powerful thinker and the 
strong, reliable memory. 



136 THE ART OF STUDY 



CHAPTER XIV. 

CLASSIFICATION. 

In the last few chapters stress has been laid on the 
part played by the principle of the association of ideas 
in all our thinking; and the importance of giving it 
deliberate attention in the training of one's own mental 
powers has been duly emphasized. To make the matter 
more impressive, let us consider the reason why the stu- 
dent learns things so rapidly wliich the world was so long 
in learning. In a few weeks he can get a tolerably good 
outline knowledge of a subject of which whole ages of the 
world remained entirely ignorant. 

Take as an example Grimm's law of the shifting 
of consonants only so far as it concerns the relation of the 
English and German languages. It seems perfectly easy 
for the student to see that where English has th, German 
has dy as in thi^. dies; thumb, Daume; thick, dick; that 
English V and d are displaced by German h and t, as in 
dove, Tauhe; love, Lidte; shove, sliieben; middle, mittel; 
widoiv, Witttue. In a few days the ordinary student can 
develop an elementary knowledge of this principle of the 
shifting of consonants into a powerful intellectual weapon 
in the pursuit of knowledge and into a means of deeper 
insight into the relationship of the two languages than 



CLASSIFICATION 137 

he could have dreamed of having before he became aware 
of the principle. 

Why did the world have to wait until the nineteenth 
century for Grimm to make a scientific statement of the 
law that governs consonantal changes in the Indo-Euro- 
pean languages when a common student can get a toler- 
ably fair grasp of the subject in so short a time ? There 
had surely been enough linguistic scholars in the world 
before his time, and they had done their best to be real 
scholars. Whj^ was the world^s penetrative power so ob- 
tuse compared with the insight of a beginner in the study 
of language? 

The answer is easy ; and the surest way for anyone to 
avoid intellectual self-conceit is to remember that answer 
carefully and all the time. In every subject that the 
student studies, from Grimm^s law' to Geology, the in- 
formation is carefully classified for him in advance. The 
hard work is all done. The world was slow in doing it, 
but it did better than any individual ever did. After 
Grimm and his predecessors have dug out the facts 
that are scattered everywhere at random in the languages 
concerned; after the facts that are alike have all been 
placed side by side, and the general truth that they then 
reveal has been stated clearly, it is an easy matter to com- 
prehend and apply the principle; and that is all the stu- 
dent does. 

In systematic botany it is infinitely easier to classify 
plants with the help of the "key" than it was to make 
the key from a study of the plants. It required many 



138 THE ART OF STUDY 

generations of able botanists to carry on the collection 
and comparison of plants before a natural classification 
was worked out, in which all the plants that really be- 
longed together were put in the same groups. We would 
be less inclined to sneer at the stupidity of former times, 
if we always realized how infinitely difficult it is to under- 
stand or even be aware of the existence of any subject 
before the facts relating to it have been associated under 
the principle of similarity. 

When a little child puts all its yellow flowers in one 
hand and its blue ones in the other, it has accomplished 
an act of classification. A single statement, a definition, 
can now be made that will cover all the flowers in each 
hand. The child may do no more than hold one of the 
bunches up to its mother and say "blue"; but it has 
done a complete act of classification. It has separated the 
unlike, put together the like, and made a statement that 
applys to everything that is included in one of the groups. 

Every common name in the language implies classi- 
fication. Building is a general name for a large variety 
of structures, but they all have the same name because 
they have certain qualities in common, and on those com- 
mon qualities the definition of the group is based. Walls 
and a roof make a building. Under this broad definition^ 
smaller groups can be made. House and ham constitute 
two distinct sub-groups of buildings and the definition 
of each is based on the use the building is put to. Every 
time an adjective is added to a common noun, a new 
group is made. There will be fewer objects in the group, 



CLASSIFICATION 139 

but there will be more facts about the group in the 
definition of it. House includes many more objects than 
smohe-house. But the definition of the latter deals with 
more facts. Not only must the walls and roof be men- 
tioned, the word smohe introduces all the characteristic 
elemehts of that kind of a house : ham, sausage, dry punk- 
wood that will make a smoke, the thick odor of the three 
comibined, the dark inner walls, are all associations intro- 
duced by the word smoke, and they furnish suggestions 
for the larger definition. 

Now, if a student has presented to him a carefully 
classified group of facts a little reflection will bring out 
the general truths. If some friendly hand lays before 
him the fruits and flowers of many plants to ^^study" and 
places in one group the fruits and flowers of the huckle- 
berry, blueberry, cranberry, heath, American laurel, trail- 
ing arbutus, wintergreen, swamp pink, and Indian pipe, he 
can easily, if he keeps his thoughts fixed on the similarities, 
make a tolerably good definition of the family of heath- 
worts, in spite of their great differences. Or if he is fur- 
nished with a badly jumbled heap of fruits and flowers, 
and with it, good definitions of the families to which they 
belong, he can, with the help of those definitions, easily 
sort the pile into separate families of plants. 

If he is furnished with a good list of examples, thus : 
dun?iy dick, Daume, drei, du, dein, Donner, 
thin, thich, thumb, three, thou, thine, thunder, 
he can be easily led to draw a general statement from the 
facts and make at least a beginning of the rule that gov- 



140 THE ART OF STUDY 

erns consonantal differences between English and Ger- 
man. Or if he is furnished with the general statement 
that under certain conditions wherever initial d occurs 
in German it is represented by th in English, he can make 
the list himself; for with the general rule in his posses- 
sion he can easily pick the illustrations of the rule out of 
any printed page, no matter how widely scattered they 
may be. 

But that is not the way the world's knowledge grew; 
it is only a device to make rapid accumulation of knowl- 
edge possible for the student and prepare him for the real 
task. 

The end sought in classification is order, the reduction 
of a vast number of things into a few hinds. But at the 
outset the world had neither a classified group of facts 
from which to draw up general truths, nor the general 
truths by the help of which to reduce the facts to groups. 
It was a clear case of not even knowing whether there 
was anything to know. The facts of the universe are for 
the most part badly mixed. If nature is at times inclined 
to write in a legible hand she is likely, a little later, 
to write something entirely different the other way across 
the page. Humanity is obliged to gather painfully the 
facts that nature has scattered and reduce them to the 
only order in which they can be reasoned about. But 
usually the facts are so widely scattered that their rela- 
tionship to each other is not likely to be recognized at 
all. It was only after the world became profoundly im- 
pressed with the truth that all things are effects of some 



CLASSIFICATION 141 

cause, that all things can be grouped and described by 
general statements, that the human mind developed the 
haMt of studying facts. 

When a beginning has once been made, no matter 
how small or crude it is, progress becomes more rapid 
and steady until it seems as if nothing could any longer 
resist explanation. But somehow and from somewhere 
must come the suggestion that certain things belong to- 
gether. Three things can he arranged in six different 
ways, four can be arranged in twenty-four ways ; the seven 
days of the week can he arranged in 5040 different ways, 
and the twenty-four letters of the alphabet can be ar- 
ranged in 620,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 different 
ways. And until that first, fateful suggestion comes to 
serve as a starting point, there is never likely to be any- 
thing but a hopeless jumble of facts, there is no reason 
for trying to arrange them in one way rather than in any 
other. 

But while we may not be able to tell why the alpha- 
bet is arranged in the order in which we learn it and use 
it in vocabularies we constantly act upon a tacit universal 
agreement to have it so. For us this particular arrange- 
ment of the alphabet is not a matter of science but pure 
habit. We are all obliged to conform to this established 
habit ; for any one who did not conform to this particular 
arrangement of the alphabet would lose all intellectual 
contact with his fellow-men. The alphabet itself could be 
arranged in several other ways, each of which would have a 
usefulness of its own. The usual arrangement teaches 



142 THE ART OF STUDY 

us nothing at all; but its universal use is what makes it 
possible for us all to use the same dictionaries, in short, 
for us all to work in harmony. 

It would seem then that one of the most worthless 
ways to arrange a large number of words or names would 
be the present alphabetical order, if it were desired to do 
any reasoning about the facts after they were thus ar- 
ranged. Apparently the only useful purpose that the 
alphabetical arrangement of words and names can possibly 
serve is to make it easy to find any given word, or 
name, or fact. The value of this arrangement must not 
be belittled. Only a sm.all proportion of students realize 
the power which good indexes of all kinds place in their 
hands, if they will only use them freely for the purpose of 
gathering together the facts. Only the small minority 
ever learn the real value of an index in the prosecution 
of their studies. 

But an alphabetical arrangement of words does teach 
a good many things that are not considered at all when 
the arrangement is made. The truth is that it would 
probably be impossible to arrange any set of facts in any 
kind of orderly way without discovering afterwards that 
it reveals truths that were entirely unlooked for. Al- 
though we know of no good reason, apart from habit, why 
we should arrange the letters of the alphabet in the usual 
order, the matter takes an entirely different aspect when 
we come to group together all the words beginning with 
a given letter. We place closest together the words that 
are nearest alike in spelling, beginning with the initial 



CLASSIFICATION 143 

letter, and following the same principle for each letter in 
each word. The result is that a good many "natural 
groups" of words are formed and wholly incidentally the 
material is put in good shape to teach some general truth. 

If one is sufficiently alert to look for such groups, 
it is easy to notice that whole pages of sl dictionary are 
taken up with words beginning with the single prefix in; 
but that there are very few words with the prefix in- whose 
stems begin with b, I, m, p , or r. A study of the words 
as they are grouped will reveal the fact that in is the 
original form of the prefix and that it comes from two 
sources, the Anglo-Saxon, and the Latin, bringing with 
it special meanings from each source ; that before / the in 
becomes il, before r it becomes ir, and before &, m, and 
p , it becomes irn. A study of these facts in turn will 
lead to reflection upon the assimilation of one letter to 
the sound of another, so that the organs of speech may 
have no difficulty in pronouncing them. 

This example seems almost too dry and simple to 
mention, but it is not so dry and simple as it looks. Given 
a mind that is awake, every little point like this may 
become the origin of a whole new field of knowledge. 

Suppose, on the other hand, a student is puzzled to 
know why get is pronounced with a hard g and gem with 
a soft g. It is an anomaly and a sore puzzle only until 
he thinks it worth while to consider the matter from a 
general point of view. The "reason why" of such a 
thing must be brought under a rule; and a rule can be 
drawn only from a classified list of words. The easiest 



144 THE ART OF STUDY 

thing to do is to go to a dictionary and grasp the whole 
subject vigorously instead of dabbling merely with get 
and gem. Even in a common academic dictionary it is 
no task to see that the initial g is soft before e in the 
words of Latin origin and hard in those of Germanic 
origin. 

Of course^ it may not always be the wisest way to 
search out a particular piece of information. Many 
of the "rules" that a student could extract from an 
alphabetical arrangement of words were recognized and 
carefully written long before he was born. The point 
I wish to make is that any classification that is valuable 
in a single respect, is likely to furnish the observant mind 
with new and unexpected information that was wholly 
unanticipated when the classification was made. It re- 
quires close attention to exhaust the information that 
any classification of facts can suggest. 

A city directory is only a convenient means of find- 
ing names and addresses. But it can teach a good many 
important truths about the city it represents. Certain 
kinds of names are characteristic of certain races of men. 
The number of O'Briens, O'Haras and McCartys, of 
Schmidt and Schneider and of Goldstein can be made 
to indicate roughly the proportion of Irishmen, Germans, 
German Jews, etc., to the whole population. A moder- 
ate amount of attention to the streets on which these 
people live will enable one to locate the colonies of Irish- 
men, Germans, Eussians, on the accompanying map. In 



CLASSIFICATION 145 

the same way the businesss directory easily reveals the 
location of the wholesale district, the foundries, "news- 
paper row," and all the other businesses that tend to 
congregate in sections. 

Let us suppose just as useless a classification as one 
could well imagine. Suppose that some one, in 1948, 
should arrange in alphabetical order the names of all 
the men in the civilized world, using the Christian name 
instead of the surname as the basis of classification and 
giving their age and nativity. Would it teach anything 
at all? He would probably find a considerable number 
of men whose names would be bunched together because 

their Christian names were all "George Dewey .'^ 

He would find them all about fifty years old and all of 
American origin, with never a Spaniard among them. 
The facts would be ready for an inference; and it would 
probably be that some George Dewey had made an impres- 
sion on the American world, that numerous baby boys 
had been named after him, and that the Spaniards felt 
no friendly interest in him. 

But while it has been shown that any classification, 
even one most unlikely to be useful for scientific purposes, 
often reveals important and interesting truths, it must 
not be inferred that classification is an infallible magi- 
cian's wand by means of which to bring order out of chaos 
at once and to discover truth. Arranging objects in any 
one of the numberless possible ways merely to see if that 
arrangement will reveal some truth is likely to be useful 



146 THE ART OF STUDY 

only for the purpose of killing time. It has been already 
shown that it is impossible to group objects in all the 
conceivable arrangements. The motive for making a 
classification of any kind is usually some similarity among 
objects that has been spontaneously recognized. When 
once a few objects are recognized to be alike in any re- 
spect, this similarity furnishes the basis for the first rude 
attempts at classification. 

Take the earliest written classification of animals — 
from the book of Genesis. It recognizes as groups, the 
birds of the air, the beasts of the field, the creeping 
things on the earth, and the fishes in the sea. This classi- 
fication is immemorial because it is inevitable, and it will 
always remain a popular classification for the same rea- 
son. The first classifications of any objects will be based 
on the most obvious and striking characters. Birds are so 
very much alike and so different from all other animals 
that the group is bound to be recognized. Now in the 
popular mind the most striking character of birds is the 
power of flight. But as soon as a systematic effort is 
made to classify birds with the power of flight as the 
basis of arrangement, a multitude of difficulties arise. 
There are birds that can hardly walk or fly, but can swim 
well ; there are others that can run but can neither swim 
nor fly; and bats can fly as well as birds. So that while 
the most obvious character may serve for ordinary pur- 
poses of classification, it may fail utterly if put to a rigid 
test. It will not fit some of the animals that certainly 



CLASSIFICATION 147 

'belong in the group, and includes animals that just as 
certainly do not belong there. 

The great importance of classification arises from the 
fact that a series of objects that have some one character 
in common are very likely to be alike also in many other 
respects. Common sense would immediately save its 
definition of birds by adding other important characters 
that always seem to be found in combination, and which 
together make birds what they are. It can easily make 
a much better definition of a bird by calling it a tooth- 
less, feathered, egg-laying biped with front limibs modified 
for flight. Such a definition marks a decided advance. 
All living birds will answer to some at least of the char- 
acters. Bats are easily shut out, and so are the lowest 
mammals, the egg-laying monotremes. 

It appears, therefore, that a classification is likely 
to be natural and complete in proportion to the number 
and importance of the characters that can be used in 
framing it. But the process of reaching such perfection 
is painfully slow and devious. How shall it be known in 
advance what characters always occur together, and which 
are the most important? An animal's mode of locomo- 
tion may be very important for its "personal purposes; but 
it may be only a stumbling block to one trying to classify 
birds accurately. The only thing that can be done is to 
make a classification of birds on the basis of such simi- 
larities as are readily recognized. Careful study is bound 
to reveal other characters associated with those already 



148 THE ART OF STUDY 

known, for example, that a bird's aorta turns to the 
right, while a mammaFs turns to the left. 

But, as accurate knowledge slowly increases, even the 
best of classifications and the definitions based on them 
seem to break down. It was discovered during the past 
century that in ancient geological times there were birds 
with long tails and serried rows of dangerous-looking 
teeth. The increase of knowledge finally led to an en- 
tirely different view of birds. They are now known to be 
closely related to the reptiles and are placed side by side 
with them in the group Sauropsida. This group is based 
on the characters which birds and reptiles have in com- 
mon. The two groups are distinguished from each other 
in a far more painstaking way than formerly. 

This breaking down of old knowledge does not indi- 
cate that the method of acquiring it was wrong. It only 
proves once more that we constantly begin to work with 
the most obvious facts, and only slowly succeed in reach- 
ing a perfectly natural classification by penetrating be- 
hind the most striking appearances. 

Anyone can readily recall instances of how easy it is 
to be deceived. No boy who ever brushed his bare legs 
against the stinging nettles would dream of putting those 
little enemies of his in the same group of plants with the 
elms and the hop-vine. But while they are so different 
in appearance, close examination shows that their 
flowers, fruits and leaves, in fact all the characters that 
are now regarded as important, prove them to be very 



CLASSIFICATION 149 

much alike. In some of the previous chapters it has been 
pointed out that careful scrutiny is necessary to a right 
understanding of things. The spontaneous associations 
that we make among things are always based on striking, 
easily observed facts. The power of flight is impressive, 
and greatly unlike the power to walk. To the casual ob- 
server a tree is very different from an herb in appearance. 
But sometimes those striking appearances are utterly de- 
ceiving to one who is seeking the real relationships of 
plants to one another. 

There is no mechanical way in which the best char- 
acter can be chosen at the outset for purposes of classi- 
fication. We start, of necessity, with that which is plain- 
est, most evident to us at the time. The first steps in 
any effort at classification are tolerably sure to prove 
themselves artificial with the later growth of knowledge. 
But it is only by trying on any given character, just as 
we try on clothes, that we can be sure that we are on the 
right track. 

The process of classification looks easy ; but even the 
slow progress that the world has made in the various de- 
partments of organized knowledge has taxed to the ut- 
most the sagacity of the best-trained men. And the end 
is not yet. Each generation has improved somewhat the 
classification of plants, until now botanists feel that they 
have a natural arrangement ; but there is still a great deal 
to be cleared up. 

In casual thought we constantly pitch upon appear- 



150 THE ART OF STUDY 

ances as a basis of comparison. Law may still treat the 
whale as a fish, but science insists that it is mnch more 
closely related to the mouse. "Common sense" would say 
that the nettle and some of the other common weeds are 
fairly close together, but science says the nettle and the 
elm are relatives. A novice would quite likely begin his 
work by using the horns of certain animals as a basis of 
classification, and in a little while he would discover that 
the character he has chosen is utterly worthless, because 
the presence of horns would put the male of the deer 
and sheep in one group and the females of the same 
species in another. Horns can, of course, be used as a 
basis of classification, but when the groups are made, they 
are practically worthless; they do not teach much truth. 

The direction of progress in making a perfect classifi- 
cation of any set of objects, is toward discovering charac- 
ters that will reveal the true relationships of the facts. 
If one such character is once secured, for example, feath- 
ers as a distinguishing character for birds, and all animals 
possessing that character are grouped together, it will in- 
variably 'be found that other very important characters 
are associated with it. Feathers mean egg-layers and the 
presence of front wings modified for flight, and an aortic 
arch that turns to the right. As soon as such a correla- 
tion of different characters is well established the group 
must be recognized as a natural one. 

When the mind once habitually associates such a 
group of natural characters together, it uses it as a means 



CLASSIFICATION 151 

of discovery. We feel sure that those things will always 
be found together. Every feathered creature is assumed 
to be an egg-layer with a right aortic arch. A good 
zoologist can tell from a single tooth what kind of an 
animal carried it around in its mouth; because a given 
kind of tooth is associated with certain other bodily struct- 
ures and physical habits. This lends a marvelous power 
to our thought. It furnishes the basis for inference. 

But the fancied security of a natural classification 
may receive a rude shock at any time. In the course of 
time, up from the dim past looms the bird with teeth and 
long tail. It would seem as if the whole classification of 
birds would be shattered and that confidence would be 
displaced by discouragement. 

But instead of being a cause for despair, such ap- 
parent break-downs of old systems and old definitions, are 
only the 'beginning of broader views, deeper insight, and 
the opportunity for a still better expression of all the 
facts. The presence of teeth, a well-developed tail and 
other antique characters in fossil birds serves to show 
still more closely the connection between modern birds 
and reptiles than the living structures do. It is true that 
the ancient birds are very different from the modern but 
those differences all point in the same direction. They 
teach a great new truth; they enlarge the intellectual 
vision ; what seems to some like nothing but a rude shock 
to the stability of our knowledge seems to others like a 
new revelation. It opens up new intellectual views, as 



152 THE ART OF STUDY 

lifting the eyes from the ground to the horizon makes a 
new world for the observer. It must be remembered that 
classification is only a tool, that truth is the end sought; 
and that in the very act of overthrowing an old classifica- 
tion, the mind may be taking a long stride nearer the 
truth. 

The importance of the general subject of the associa- 
tion of ideas and its technical expression in the process of 
classification cannot be sufticiently emphasized in a chap- 
ter. It will be found to be really the burden of the next 
chapter, on Memory, as well as most of the others. It 
lies at the very root of intellectual power. The mere 
reading of a chapter or two on the subject cannot take 
the place of constant attention to the process in the stu- 
dent's daily work. It is not merely dealing with facts, 
but the way in which he deals with them, that is the test 
of the student's training. This process of association and 
classification of facts by means of which truth is brought 
to the surface cannot be too closely attended to, or too 
assiduously cultivated. 



MEMORY 153 



CHAPTER XV. 

MEMORY. 

Of all the intellectual powers, memory is most sus- 
ceptible to the treatment of quacks, and has suffered 
most from devices for its improvement. The wonder 
about memory is, not that it fails to retain so much, but 
that it succeeds in retaining so much of the countless 
thousands of mental experiences that the life passes 
through in the course of years. 

The emphasis that has been laid upon memory in the 
training of the mind has not been misplaced. The great 
defects of memory cannot be minimized. But most of 
the devices for its improvement have led to no permanent 
good results, because, like quack medicines, they deal 
mostly with the symptoms and fail entirely to touch the 
constitutional traits to which the defects are due. The 
flaws of memory are no worse than the flaws of reasoning. 
Most of our common, unstudied reasoning is false. But 
we remain for the most part blissfully unaware of its fatal 
defects. We make mistakes but do not realize them im- 
mediately. There is no shock, because the effect of our 
false reasoning is delayed. We make mistakes and avoid 
them next time. But when memory fail's on a particular 



154 THE ART OF STUDY 

point it is a simple, striking fact. We realize the effect 
of the failure fully because we realize it immediately. 

There is probably no direct cure for the defects of 
memory. Just as a good physician, in treating many 
wasting diseases, finds it necessary to let the symptoms 
take care of themselves while he carefully builds up the 
general physical constitution in order to develop power 
to resist and throw off disease; so in the treatment of 
memory, the real question is not merely one of sheer cling- 
ing to facts after they have been once secured, but it is 
a question of the way in which the knowledge is first pre- 
sented to the mind. 

The careless human mind is engrossed only with the 
present; it has neither far-reaching mental vision into 
the future nor apparently any certain means of penetrat- 
ing again the rapidly growing twilight of the past. The 
spirit of civilization might be defined as the inspiration 
to gaze steadily into the future and provide for it. It is 
only with the growth of civilization that steady anticipa- 
tion takes the place of prophecy. And all this peering 
into the future with more or less success is the outcome 
of remembering past experiences and using them as a 
basis for our judgments. 

Neither forward-looking nor backward-looking by it- 
self is of any substantial value. The mind that is con- 
stantly looking into and picturing the future without test- 
ing those images of the fancy by the images of the mem- 
ory is sure to be a mind littered with day-dreams. The 



MEMORY 155 

thinking has no effect upon and no relation to the pass- 
ing life. Vain imaginings, beatific visions, the wild hope- 
fulness aroused by the uncontrolled mental imagery are 
always shattered by the dull thuds of cold experience. 

The mind that spends its time and energy recalling 
the past likewise leaves the practical life unguided. The 
present life is apparently only an uninteresting by-play 
of the outer world ; it is moved along and buffeted by cir- 
cumstances; while the mind broods upon the past and 
bewails the fact that it is only a memory. It draws 
neither inspiration nor lessons from it, but merely dwells 
upon it. 

The competent mind, the mind that helps to mold 
and control the IndividuaFs present existence, foresees the- 
probable events of the future and provides for them. And 
it draws upon experience — memory — for the materials 
upon which to base its judgments and its acts. It taxes 
what is known in order to enable it to forecast what is yet 
unknown. It is perhaps safe to say that one of the prin- 
cipal reasons why so very small a proportion of human 
minds are in any sense competent to deal with new prob- 
lems, new conditions, hitherto unexperienced circum- 
stances, is because the vast majority of men fail to use 
the past in trying to understand the future, fail to make^ 
what is already known explain the unknown that is under 
immediate consideration. 

Every teacher daily wears away the force of his life 
trying to make his pupils understand the problem under 



156 THE ART OF STUDY 

consideration by means of what they have learned before. 
It is because students do not remember and apply to the 
new case, what was learned about a former one, that prog- 
ress is so slow, that every new step has to be taken as if it 
were one into utter darkness. Students are constantly 
making translations from foreign languages into English 
which have no meaning, which are only jumbles of ill- 
fitting words ; and all because they treat every phrase and 
clause and sentence as absolutely independent of what 
stands all around it. It is the past, what is known, that 
furnishes the only possible explanation of the future, of 
the unknown. It is the context that gives its vital mean- 
ing to every word in a sentence, to every sentence in a 
paragraph. The student who "hangs to the story," who 
remembers every step that has been taken, in order to make 
it help explain what is coming — or if he has forgotten it, 
goes back to recall it for that purpose — can always tell 
when his translation is correct, and never feels satisfied 
until it is. What he already knows makes him feel 
sharply any error and realize keenly the satisfaction of 
having harmonized each clause and sentence and phase of 
thought with what has gone before. 

Now, the student wants memory to hold fast the 
facts for future effect; not to brood upon and mumble 
over when the teeth have begun to chatter and the power 
of thought is failing. With this thought uppermost, let 
us consider the question of memory a little more in detail. 

There are memory-freaks that possess almost super- 



MEMORY . 157 

human powers. But they are so unusual that they have 
no interest for the present discussion. There is no doubt 
that under the general head of memory are included sev- 
eral quite distinct ways in which men seek to retain ex- 
periences that they have once had. But in a brief dis- 
cussion like this I shall attempt to call attention to only 
a few important features of the matter which have a 
direct bearing on the student's voluntary effort to remem- 
ber. 

Let us take from Hiawatha the passage which 
describes the young Indian's first hunting trip and make 
note of the different ways in which it can be treated in the 
effort to learn it. Noble passages of poetry, dates and 
names in history, the details of any body of knowledge 
slip away in spite of strenuous efforts to recall them. If 
once the method of remembering is fairly considered, the 
problem of forgetting will take care of itself. 

As Hiawatha walked, his little forest friends besought 
him not to shoot them ; 

^'But he heeded not nor heard them. 
For his thoughts were with the red deer; 
On their tracks his eyes were fastened. 
Leading downward to the river. 
To the ford across the river. 
And as one in slumber walked he. 
Hidden in the alder bushes, 
There he waited till the deer came, 
Till he saw two antlers lifted, 



158 . THE ART OF STUDY 

Saw two eyes look from the thicket, 
Saw two nostrils point to windward, 
And a deer came down the pathway, 
Flecked with leafy light and shadow." 

The most common way of dealing with this passage, 
in an effort to commit it to memory, would be to handle 
it as a mere succession of words. They would be learned 
so that when one word is remembered or spoken, it recalls 
the next following word, and so on through the whole 
passage. There is very commonly nothing but a mere as- 
sociation of words with each other in a certain order. 
Both children and older people habitually, when they 
make a voluntary effort to commit a thing to memory, 
learn and remember it in this way. Each word calls up 
the next; and if one word is forgotten, or worse still, if 
several are forgotten, the memory has entirely lost its 
hold. The only chain of association is broken, and there 
is but little hope of recovering it at all. 

This is pure memorizing, lip memorizing, by sheer 
force of will and endless repetition. It is what makes 
the routine work of so man}^ studies the grinding curse 
of childhood, and it is the common method of older stu- 
dents who have never learned the art of thinking. It is 
this kind of learning, significantly designated by the ex- 
pression ^^committing to memory," that lends itself so 
readily to quack treatment. 

But it is just as well to raise the question at once, 
whether this kind of verbal memory can be trained at all. 



MEMORY 159 

There is an urgent feeling that the power of remembering 
is improved by much "committing to memory." It has 
been often urged that if a regular practice is made of 
memorizing passages of poetry and oratory, important 
historical and other facts, the memory is improved by the 
process. But that is very doubtful. Of course, the 
poetry and the facts will be useful. The more one learns 
thoroughly, the more he will remember in later life. But 
that is not improving the power of remembering; it is 
only loading more things into the memory to carry along. 
It is very doubtful whether ten years of steady effort at 
mere verbal memorizing would make the memory any 
more powerful to deal with new facts. 

One may commit to memory the year 1732 as the 
date of Washington's birth. By sheer force of will it can 
be attended to so often and so long that it will never be 
forgotten. In the course of time such a bit of informa- 
tion becomes a free lance of the memory. It comes back 
readily, and as it were, at its own sweet will. It is so well 
'learned" that it often breaks in upon the thought when 
it has no business there ; when the mind is more properly 
occupied with other things. But no amount of that kind 
of memory work is likely to improve one's ability to deal 
with new facts. ■ 

A change does take place in the course of time, so 
that the memory, with practice, does become more power- 
ful ; but the change is not due to the mere force of much 
memorizing. Even the most bungling kind of practice 



160 THE ART OF STUDY 

makes the performer more skillful. But the increasing 
skill is not due to the continuation of the bungling. Im- 
provement in power of any kind almost invariably means 
a change of met^wd in the way the thing is done. In learn- 
ing to hoe potatoes, improvement actually means apply- 
ing less muscular effort instead of more. Perfect skill 
merely means the elimination of unnecessary effort and 
perfect adaptation of every movement to the work to be 
done. The most skillful workman is never the hardest 
worker ; he comes out at the end of the day not only with 
the most and neatest work done, but with the least back- 
ache. Skill is the substitution of reason in place of brute 
force. 

What actually takes place when there is any real im- 
provement in the power to remember, is a radical change 
in the method of first acquiring new information. If once 
the mind, instead of merely trying to make certain words 
hang together in a certain order, concentrates its energy 
strongly on the successive acts of the little Indian and the 
deer, a powerful weapon is added to the memory. If a 
vivid mental pantomime accompanies the effort to learn 
the words, if the learner clearly pictures to himself the 
successive movements of the two, feels in a measure what 
the boy felt, appreciates the significance of the acts of 
the deer, has a strong sense that all these successive acts 
are parts of a play that is moving rapidly toward a climax 
sought by the boy and feared by the deer, the whole 
method of learning has been changed. The association is 



MEMORY 161 

no longer a mere association of words with one another in 
a certain order ; but of choice and powerful words with a 
vivid mental picture. When memory is called upon to 
bring back the passage, it will begin at once to play on 
these images of the little drama; and they are likely to 
return in their original order because each act in the 
drama is felt to be the natural antecedent of the next one. 
The words are made vivid by association with the vivid 
images, and are readily recalled because of this associa- 
tion. 

When once the mind dwells strongly and persistently 
on the thoughts expressed, those lines of Hiawatha be- 
come a pleasure instead of a burden. When the thought 
is the burden of the mind and the words are only means 
for its expression, whole lines might be lost at first in 
reciting; but the thought can be picked up again, and 
then the words come back almost of their own accord. 

This method is no cure-all; it does not provide 
against carelessness or guarantee perfection. In fact, it 
is possible to repeat the "substance" of the passage and 
do no injustice to the poetic imagery, and still not repeat 
the words accurately at all. Mistakes in quoting are no 
more justifiable under this method of learning than under 
any other; but perhaps the temptation to neglect perfec- 
tion in repeating the words exactly is increased by the fact 
that the "substance of the story" can be so readily repro- 
duced. Argument about the matter is out of place. 
Slovenliness in quoting poetry or repeating facts can never 



162 THE ART OF STUDY 

be justified by one who has his own intellectual welfare at 
heart. The best method of training the memory must 
include training in accuracy as well as facility. 

The true training of memory consists, not in loading 
it down, but in keeping it unloaded and increasing its 
power to recall. And the surest way to recall any item of 
knowledge is by means of the associations which have been 
formed between it and other facts. 

Little children suffer much in learning the multipli- 
cation table. Some of that suffering is unavoidable, for 
no alleviation can be offered on the score of interest or 
pleasure or beauty. What part of the table is it that the 
child learns quickly and surely? Learning the fives is 
always a relief, because there is a simple rule to remem- 
ber the succession by. In the list of answers there is first 
a five and then a cipher, constantly repeated. The an- 
swers have something in common ; they fall under a sim- 
ple general rule. I have known a little boy to learn the 
nines in five minutes, after it was pointed out to him that 
at each step the tens in the answer increased by one and 
the units figure decreased by one. 

I say he "learned" the nines in five minutes. He 
could not at once give any answer at random, without 
thinking ; that only came after longer familiarity with the 
table. But he was never lost; he had within himself the 
power to reproduce the table of the nines and find the an- 
swer wanted. He might have to do some thinking before 



MEMORY 163 

he could say that 7x9 = 63; but he always said it after a 
little consideration. There was a superb confidence in 
the way in which he would set out upon the task of finding 
what he wanted. With constant use, he began to remem- 
ber each product by itself, without the help of the rule ; 
and now he probably never stops to think of it. But the 
great value of the simple little rule in first learning the 
nines, lay in the fact that by means of it, all the facts 
were at once brought permanently into the jurisdiction of 
the memory, and in such a way that they could not escape. 
If they were forgotten, they could be reproduced. 

What is true of the multiplication table is true of 
the declension of nouns and of the conjugation of verbs 
in a foreign language, or of any other subject, in any 
field of the intellectual life upon which thought can be 
spent. It is temporarily easier to learn a conjugation by 
rote than to learn the few general rules by means of 
which the whole conjugation can be built up. The latter 
process requires much more strenuous thought. In build- 
ing up a conjugation from rules, a good many things 
have to be thought about at every step. It is taxing; it 
requires mental effort. In memorizing things by rote, 
real thinking is reduced to a minimum. But it is at this 
critical point that so many students commit intellectual 
folly; they choose the method that is temporarily easier, 
at a sacrifice of permanent power. He who tries to learn 
to swim by straddling a slab will always be a water-fool. 
He never feels a sense of personal power. 



164 THE ART OF STUDY 

So with the student. If he is forever trying to re- 
member things by the way he saw them printed, he is 
helpless and a hopeless slave. But when once he grasps 
vigorously the general principles, he has discovered his 
intellectual self. The spirit of mastery has come over 
him. It is ever afterward in his power to reproduce any 
item of knowledge that he needs or wishes. Laws and 
principles are few; separate facts are innumerable. By 
prompt mastery of the former, the latter are easily sub- 
dued, memory is spared and the mind made rich. The 
great danger of the scholar is inability to recover again 
what he has once learned. Rapidity and directness of 
recall are matters of comparatively subordinate impor- 
taneo: they are easily developed by constant use of the 
facts. 

The student may as well accept the truth of the 
German proverb and act upon it: "Aller Anfang ist 
schwer,'' Every beginning is hard. The teacher who 
seeks to make a student's task easy by avoiding the gen- 
eral principles that underlie a subject not only deceives 
himself; he is a public criminal. The student who shys 
at a strong effort to master the rule, and prefers to learn 
by rote, is permanently depriving himself of the pleasure 
that comes of wielding intellectual power. 

It would be very comfortable if every loaded wagon 
could be started from an inclined plane. A span of young 
horses might give so much less trouble in the breaking if 
it were made easier for them to walk and pull than to 



MEMORY 165 

stand still. But they would be more stupid in old age 
than in their youth. Xo right start is easy ; no more for 
the student than for a dumb beast. 



166 THE ART OF STUDY 



CHAPTER XVI. 

A GOOD MEMORY DEPENDS ON GOOD THINKING. 

If what has been said in the last chapter is true, the 
great increase in the power of memory which often comes 
to a faithful student results from transferring the mental 
energy from the succession of mere words to the thoughts 
expressed by those words. The grasp of the memory de- 
pends on the mental grasp of the thought. And thought, 
to be cohesive, must make every fact a part of some great- 
er whole, must bring it under some rule or general law. 
Real increase in the power to remember means an impor- 
tant change in the whole attitude toward facts. 

It is extremely interesting to watch a good student, 
in any ordinary recitation, recite first what he has al- 
ready prepared, and afterwards attack a passage of a 
foreign language which he has never studied before. 
Even in the best of students there is a chronic, inherent 
tendency to lapse from sharp and clear-cut thinking to 
mere remembering. In reciting what he has already pre- 
pared the tendency constantly is to repeat the translation 
just as it was made in the first place. There is no vigor- 
ous thinking. It is a case of mere old-fashioned verbal 
memory, and the result is that the student repeats all his 



GOOD MEMORY DEPENDS ON GOOD THINKING 167 

mistakes as well as his successes, just as he made them 
when he studied the lesson. 

Now watch him when he assaults a passage never 
read before. A different mental tone is roused at sight 
of it. The lion in him begins to stir. The spirit of mas- 
tery comes over him. He summons all his mental forces ; 
there are all the signs of mental labor. He is thinking 
hard. The translation is crude enough, but there is a 
vigor and freshness about the mental movement, an at- 
mosphere of energy about it that is charming, after the 
listless machine-like process of repeating a prepared les- 
son. 

It is when the student ceases to think and only tries 
to "remember," that he falls into the rut of verbal mem- 
ory. If the same student, always assuming that he is a 
good one, after preparing a lesson, uses all the knowledge 
he already has of it in order to understand it again instead 
of merely trying to remember it, he will penetrate deeper 
into the meaning of the passage every time he goes over 
it. Such a mental attitude is inspiring ; only it is slow in 
coming to birth, and in constant danger of being stifled by 
verbal memorizing. From whatever point of view the 
matter is approached, the question of improving the power 
to remember invariably leads to the answer that the only 
real solution lies in better, clearer, more vigorous think- 
ing. 

The famous and often-quoted case of Thurlow Weed 
may as well be pressed once more into service. He was a 



168 THE ART OF STUDY 

great New York editor and politician; and his calling 
made him feel ver}^ keenly the defects of his memory. He 
could not remember the faces and names of the many men 
he met; the happenings of the moment did not make a 
lasting impression on him. He conld not recall things 
which were important to him afterwards. 

He finally resolved to review, at the end of each day, 
the happenings of that day, and so accustom himself to 
recall more surely and accurately what he had seen and 
done. In short, he would improve his memory. He 
adopted the practice, which he kept up for fifty years, of 
telling his wife every night the history of the day's do- 
ings. And he became a marvel to himself. He could re- 
member faces and names, could give the substance of what 
he had written and said and could tell what he had seen; 
and he could do it all easily. In his case there could be 
no question about the marvelous improvement in the pow- 
er to remember. The secret of such a power would be 
worth much fine gold to most men of the world as well as 
to scholars both the ripe and the immature. 

We are concerned with what really caused the im- 
provement. Could Thurlow Weed remember the details 
of Tuesday better merely because he had exerted his 
memory in rehearsing to his wife the happenings of Mon- 
day? Prof. William James has doubtless given the true 
explanation of Weed's increased power to remember. He 
has pointedly remarked that the improvement of memory 
was really an improvement in attention and observation. 



GOOD MEMORY DEPENDS ON GOOD THINKING 169 

The fact that when night came he would call upon him- 
self to relate what had happened during the day had a 
very stimulating effect upon his attention throughout the 
day. It caused his intellect to dance a lively attendance 
upon everything that happened as it came aJorig, to per- 
form that very important act of reflection upon everything 
that happened just as soon as it was over with, which re- 
moved the fatal blur from the first impression and made 
it forever vivid. 

The systematic, abbreviated nightly review of all 
that happened during the day gave the final touch of 
permanence to that day's experience. It made the day's 
experience more valuable to him by the calm reflections it 
induced, and the opportunity it gave him of comparing 
•and connecting the facts of that day with the rest of the 
best and most important experiences of his life. It was 
not sheer practice in recalling that wrought the change in 
him. It was a change of method. By habitually applying 
his thinking powers to the details, as they occurred, his 
experiences always left clear impressions, and the imme- 
diate and regular review fixed them, organized them and 
associated them with his general experiences. 

A day's experience is comparatively safe in any man's 
memory, if it is treated as Weed treated the details of liis 
life. There was no mystery about his ability to remem- 
ber names and faces and all other things both long and 
well. It was doubtless a case of strenuous application of 
thinking powers which are usually more than half asleep. 



170 THE ART OF STUDY 

The fateful influence of the first impression we re- 
ceive of anything, upon our whole later attitude toward 
the information then acquired, has been already dwelt 
upon. An error in observation, inadequate comprehen- 
sion, a misinterpretation at the outset, makes accuracy, 
clearness and stability a practical impossibility afterwards. 
The first impression propagates itself with all its defects; 
and plants itself so firmly that it can be removed or im- 
proved only by a violent mental wrench. It is as difficult 
as the eradication of a bad habit. Most of the experi- 
ences of life aside from those of daily routine, are not 
usually repeated ; and unless they are surely and correctly 
fixed they are lost or valueless. 

The student's task is to seek deliberately and by 
every available means, to make the first impression im- 
pressive. If he fails to do this his knowledge will have 
but little passing value and no future value whatever. It 
will be only mental litter. He cannot set up the defense 
of the old lady whom the minister asked on Monday what 
help she had gained from the sermon on Sunday. She 
had to admit that she did not remember anything; but 
she cleared herself with a figure of speech. The clothes 
that she had been washing no longer held any of the 
water, but they were clean; so she had forgotten what 
was said, but she was better for what she had heard. 
The student cannot afford to get only the passing tempo- 
rary effect of study and lose the facts immediately so 
that he can never recover them. 



GOOD MEMORY DEPENDS ON GOOD THINKING 171 

There are two ways in which one may seek to grasp 
a subject or the task of a day. A novel, to be an artistic 
success, must proceed by steady progress toward a climax, 
and yet the elements of uncertainty must be great enough 
to keep the reader's interest keyed up. The zest of life 
itself comes largely from the fact that we can plan for it 
only in part. It would be barren of its best influence if 
the future could be fully foreseen or if it were utterly be- 
yond our ken. It is the delightful uncertainty tempered 
with perpetual hope that makes life what it is and keeps 
us active. In our reading and in our other pleasurable 
activities we are like the little bear in the story : "We like 
to be made nervous." If this were the student's chief 
aim he would do well to seek only the temporary impres- 
sion for the sake of the feeling it produces. 

But his aim is solid, permanent acquisition. To re- 
turn to the novel, what the student wants is to grasp it 
as a plot, a structure, and a work of art. He wants to 
see what relation each part bears to the whole. He wants 
to "see the wheels go 'round.'' To this end he would do 
well to read the end of the story first. Then he would 
have the result of all the sentiment and passion and 
agony and what not in mind as he reads each detail. He 
would then be able to read everything in the light of the 
final outcome, and Judge of the relative value and see the 
relation of each part to the whole. This method would 
largely eliminate feeling from the task, but it would give 
a much stronger mental grasp of the whole and of each 
part at a single reading. 



172 THE ART OF STUDY 

It has been said of Sir Henry Maine, the author of 
Ancient Law, that he could tear the heart out of a book 
at a single reading. It was also true of him that his 
thought was clear and his memory good. At bottom the 
two powers are really one. The power to retain in mem- 
ory the contents of a book, depends entirely on the power 
to grasp its contents when it is read. The masterful 
reader has a masterful memory. 

It is interesting to watch the development of mental 
power in a good student. He may not be conscious of 
what is taking place within him; he may only come to 
feel, in the course of time, that he has become a master 
in the art of learning. But the process involves a com- 
plete change of front towards the facts that he tries to 
learn. Instead of dwelling upon and trying to remember 
each detail separately as it comes up, each paragraph as 
he reads it, each word and clause as he translates it, with- 
out reference to what has gone before or what is coming 
after, he learns in time to grasp the subject as a whole. 
His mind searches for and clings to the general truth, 
to the underlying principle, and tries to understand each 
detail in its relation to the whole. The increased vitality 
of his memory is due to this powerful habit of grappling 
at the earliest possible moment with the whole of the 
subject, and thinking about it as a whole while he deals 
with the details. 

Every powerful scholar, whose memory is true to 
him, possesses this power of seizing at once upon the es- 



GOOD MEMORY DEPENDS ON GOOD THINKING 17a 

sence of what is read or heard or seen; and by means of 
this clear and sweeping mental grasp he is able to cling- 
successfully to a vast body of details that would otherwise 
make no impression and be utterly lost. Of course, this 
power comes very slowly — like everything else that is 
worth having — its soil is long study and broad training. 

A student does not need to be a philosopher to start, 
with, in order to acquire this power. He only needs to 
avail himself of what he has. If he is dissecting the- 
pneumo-gastric nerve of a cat he can cut and pick and 
peer a whole day and be no wiser when he quits than 
when he began; and he can forget immediately every- 
thing he has done. But if he traces the nerve to the 
medulla oblongata and then to its extremities in lungs 
and stomach and heart and all the time keeps thinking 
about the parts that are connecM hy it, his knowledge of 
the nerve when he gets through, will be organized into^ 
a system. 

The right way to approach any subject or any day's 
lesson or any fact is to prepare the mind for its reception 
by a review of what has gone before and is already known. 
The student who does not think over yesterday's work 
before he begins that of to-day, who does not think over 
his dissection of the nervous system of the bird that he 
has studied, before he begins to dissect the nerves of the- 
rabbit which he has not studied, fails to make use of the^ 
"flying start." He fails to prepare himself to understand 
what is coming. An honest review places the mind in a. 
state of expectant attention. 



174 THE ART OF STUDY 

The next step is to forecast as far as possible what 
is to be expected when the advance is made. If the sub- 
ject is a translation, the best thing that can be done to 
increase both speed and accuracy, is to read the whole 
passage at sight without help of grammar or dictionary. 
This preliminary struggle to understand what is new has 
a double effect. It puts to the severest possible test what 
the student already knows ; and even though only an occa- 
sional word or clause is understood, it gives invaluable 
help in understanding the drift of the work when it comes 
to be more laboriously done. Even the most ignorant 
road-builder knows enough to blaze the trees through the 
woods before he begins the slower work of clearing. By 
doing so he gives himself direction. 

When the same plan is followed in study, the intel- 
lect is thoroughly awakened to the problem; and it acts 
much more vigorously in assaulting it. The few gleams 
of light that penetrate the dense unknown put the mind 
not only in a waking but a working state. This first inde- 
pendent reading becomes by practice more valuable be- 
cause it becomes more thorough and satisfactory. With 
the known thoroughly reviewed and the unknown given 
a good preliminary survey, the new task becomes interest- 
ing because the elements for its successful solution are 
present. The past is thoroughly understood, the nature 
of the task ahead is in a measure comprehended and the 
mind itself is in a high state of activity. 

What is true of language study is true of mathe- 



GOOD MEMORY DEPENDS ON GOOD THINKING 175 

matics or history, or of the more practical-looking prob- 
lems of the laboratory or of the great and difficult prob- 
lems of the thoroughly trained, original, scientific investi- 
gator. The student who does not and cannot get a fore- 
cast of what he is studying, who does not at the earliest 
moment get hold of the controlling thought of his sub- 
ject, may not be an idler, but is an aimless worker. 

What has all this to do with memory? What is 
thoroughly understood in the getting and is carefully 
thought over afterwards will be remembered. Memory 
will hold safely what is committed to her in baskets woven 
of the tough fibres of thought. 

Of course there is difficulty connected with the 
method of study suggested above. The temptation to 
which man most readily yields is the temptation to pres- 
ent convenience; and thinking is another name for stren- 
uous endeavor. Effort to secure something apparently 
distant is the rock that wrecks the ambitions of all human- 
ity, except that of the thousandth man. But the general 
who did not plan his campaign could not meet success- 
fully the manoeuvres of his enemy. The business man 
who did not draw on his experience to form his judgments 
about the future, and did not forecast the future before 
entering it with business risks, would be doomed to feed 
on the thistles of disappointment. The student who 
does not bring up all he knows to bear upon the problem 
that is ahead and does not seek to get some understand- 
ing of the nature of what is to come, is whipped before he 



176 THE ART OF STUDY 

begins. He may recite a lesson,, he may pass an examin- 
ation, he may get a diploma, but he is not developing in- 
tellectual power. 

One phase of this subject has been several times men- 
tioned but has not been fully developed. In order to 
transform anything that is thoroughly understood into a 
permanent acquisition that can be readily reproduced in 
all its original completeness whenever it is wanted, after- 
thought is absolutely necessary. Children and most 
grown people are not given to reflective afterthought. 
The experiences of the moment pass by and are never pur- 
posely recalled. What is read leaves only a vanishing im- 
pression. All things seem to be obliterated by what fol- 
lows next. 

Each passing thought, whether it is only casual or 
the result of careful study, has a more or less marked tem- 
porary effect. But the everlasting changes that go on 
in thought wipe out what has gone before; and generally 
the fading process is rapid. Details go first, and then 
the larger outlines, until nothing is left except the re- 
membrance that something has been forgotten. 

The student's only safety lies in re-consideration of 
each subject at the earliest possible moment. After- 
thought, to be effective in fixing things permanently in 
the mind, must be performed while even the details are 
yet fresh and have not yet suffered from the perpetual 
flow of thought. The truth of this statement needs no 
corroboration. It lies at the door of everyone's experi- 
ence. 



GOOD MEMORY DEPENDS ON GOOD THINKING 177 

The student to be sure, whose time is yet divided 
among several subjects, who hurries from one topic to 
the consideration of another several times each day, is 
almost compelled to drop a subject entirely as soon as it 
is presented to him. This, coupled with the normal re- 
luctance to do a thing until it can no longer be avoided 
deprives most students of a habit which would strengthen 
tenfold their hold upon what they have learned. It was 
the immediate and deliberate review that made Thurlow 
Weed alert during the day, and gave the regular oppor- 
tunity for afterthought which always distinguishes knowl- 
edge thus dealt with from the common passing experiences 
that are not promptly and purposely recalled. This 
prompt afterthought, while the details are yet fresh, is 
the salvation of knowledge. 

Most students, at the conclusion of a period of work 
or recitation, close their books and intellects, too, upon 
the subject that has been dealt with. Notebooks are 
trusted to retain what has been heard. In the laboratory, 
the mind utterly lets go of the subject as soon as the 
hands let go of the tools. There is not the slightest effort 
at reflection upon what has been done, until preparation 
for the next sitting becomes absolutely compulsory. But 
what is the comparative value of thinking over and ex- 
panding the notes on a lecture or reviewing a lesson, if so 
long a time has elapsed that all the details and perhaps 
even the chief bearings of the subject have become hazy 
or been lost ? One would be considered foolish for allow- 



178 THE ART OF STUDY 

ing a cucumber to rot before pickling it, because its good- 
ness consists in its freshness. But we do not call our- 
selves or allow others to call us anything for neglecting 
to fix the new facts while they still have vitality. We 
carry so large a part of our knowledge under our arms in- 
stead of under our scalps because the notebooks save us 
from the apparent necessity of immediate review and 
afterthought. We think that what is written is preserved. 

The notorious ineffectiveness of cramming, so far as 
real intellectual training is concerned, is due to the fact 
that there is a large amount of absorption without steady 
afterthought. There is no time left to fix facts by re- 
view. Cramming consists in the vigorous use of what 
some one has aptly called minute-hand memory. 

Nothing that passes into the human mind is exempt 
from the fading process. The most soul-stirring thoughts 
and the most startling experiences become dim in time, 
and even if they are not forgotten, grow more and more 
ghostlike. Only those things are permanently well re- 
membered which float in the great current of daily 
thought. If a subject is constantly dwelt upon by the 
mind, its details are always well remembered. 

This leads us directly to the fact that sooner or later 
every worthy mind becomes dominated by one or a few 
great truths, one or at most a few great principles. When 
this condition is reached, the individual's knowledge be- 
comes an organic system. Facts cluster around a great 
truth because of the bearing it has on them and which 



GOOD MEMORY DEPENDS ON GOOD THINKING 179 

they have on it. Not only are one's thought and studies 
and observations then all directed toward testing and ex- 
emplifying the one great central truth and toward the 
search for facts which relate directly to it ; but the casual 
products of experience, all that is incidentally read, heard 
or observed, is made to contribute toward and is brought 
into some sort of connection with the dominating central 
truth. Something of value is extracted from nearly all 
apparently useless scraps of information and is absorbed 
into the growing structure of thought. Under these 
conditions facts are readily recalled, because they are for- 
ever eddying somewhere in the great and steady current 
of thought. Such a great idea, dominating one's think- 
ing, acts like a magnet; it picks up and makes valuable 
facts and bits of truth which otherwise would be passed 
without notice. 

I believe that every student in whom the leaven of 
the intellectual life is really working is, sooner or later 
in his development seized with a great truth. All his 
thinking powers are bent upon its unfolding. All that 
he has hitherto experienced or learned is brought to bear 
upon it in some way, all that he sees and hears and reads 
bears out his faith in it or in some way throws light upon 
it. His whole life, both past and present, clusters round 
it. His best powers of expression are devoted to its 
service, and it seems to him to be the masterpiece of his 
life. He may be aware of what is going on within him, 
and mav feel that this is his real intellectual birth. 



180 THE ART OF STUDY 

Later he may learn to his chagrin that his "new 
great truth" is as old as the first rosy streaks in the dis- 
tant dawn of civilization, that it has always been known, 
and treated through the ages as a commonplace of human 
thought ; or that it has been exploded in every new gener- 
ation and its falsity made plain to all save the beginners 
in intellectual life. He may outgrow this first intellec- 
tual love, and even wish to forget it. But the memory 
of it will remain with him throughout the years of his in- 
tellectual power. It marks the beginning of his real men- 
tal life. The vigor which that first big idea roused and 
the latent mental power that it called into conscious ac- 
tivity are never lost again if the intellectual life is healthy 
and can find other great ideas to feed upon. Under such 
conditions memory produces wonders that are undreamed 
of in a mental life that fritters itself away upon isolated 
fragments of thought. 

The thinking world as a whole has alternating periods 
of lethargy and of sublime inspiration. When it is seized 
by a great idea it fairly leaps into powerful, progressive 
thought. Before 1859, there was a long period of eddies 
and cross-currents. But when Darwin hurled the princi- 
ple of Natural Selection into the world of thought, the 
lion was aroused. Earth never saw so great intellectual 
enthusiasm, such great progress in so short a time. The 
world^s thought about every serious subject has been 
more or less re-shaped by its influence. And the world^s 
memory awoke. Old and half-forgotten facts and whole 



GOOD MEMORY DEPENDS ON GOOD THINKING 181 

systems of neglected knowleclge whirled into place as part 
of the great system. New, almost undreamed of fields 
were explored effectively. The world mind is becoming 
more and more judicial toward this great, upheaving 
thought. The first fright and the first enthusiasm have 
gone. But the world's thinking will never again be like 
what it was before the principle of Natural Selection was 
dropped into it. The world's memory of its old facts has 
become permanently vivid because they have taken on a 
new significance, they have been worked into an intellec- 
tual pattern. 

Darwin himself was an illustrious example of the 
truth that this chapter has sought to bring out. Nearly 
his whole life was devoted to the development and proof 
of one great principle, and to tracing its consequences. 
Everything he met in the way of information was brought 
to bear upon his theory. He searched books and sought 
information from living men and labored incessantly on 
original investigations, all for one purpose. He brought 
all nature and the intellectual labors of all men of all 
times under tribute to his one great thought. Will any 
fact of value be lost to such a man? He will doubtless 
forget many things, many more perhaps than most other 
people ever learn. Things are not remembered merely 
for the sake of remembering. But the reproductive mem- 
ory brings back the facts again when the mind returns to 
the great subject upon which it has spent the vigor of its 
youth and young maturity. And when the facts come 



182 THE ART OF STUDY 

back, they return in natural groups because they were 
welded at the outset into a great chain of thought. What 
is true of the memory of a great thinker must sooner or 
later become true of the memory of the humblest suc- 
cessful student. The cultivated memory leans for its 
strength upon general truths to which all its separate facts 
cling. 

It is possible for any one, under any circumstances, to 
remember a few things well by constantly recalling them, 
even though they have no vital connection in thought 
with other things. But one of the chief desirable results 
of a good education is the formation of systems of 
thought, getting possession of a great truth or principle 
and regarding all facts in the light of it. This habit re- 
sults in a vast and lasting power to recall all facts in their 
rational relations. Under the sway of thought memory 
becomes both voluminous and accurate. 



REASONING: ILLUSTRATIONS 183 



CHAPTER XVIL 
reasoning: illustrations. 

It has been truly said that any fool can reason. The 
poorest specimen of unskilled workman, incompetent from 
lack of sense and a breaker of tools from awkwardness, 
can associate the twelve-o'clock dinner-horn with "quitting 
time and something to eat." There is in this case neither 
dullness of perception nor want of will. 

But a horse can do just as severe intellectual work as 
this. One fall I drove five horses to a gang plow on a 
prairie farm in Dakota. We went our weary rounds all 
day without much sign of intelligence on anybody's part. 
We usually reached the far end of the farm on our last 
round about sundown. As a rule there was little intellec- 
tual stimulus in the ashy blue sky and brown prairie, but 
when the sun wedged itself between the two on the horizon 
there was beauty in Dakota. When we reached the end 
of the furrow and the plowshares rose out of the earth, 
even the tired horses stood still and lifted their heavy 
heads to gaze at the western sky. Perhaps no poetic fancy 
flashed through their brains; even the driver made short 
work of fancy then. But when the team turned home- 
ward and started down the last furrow the horse-mind be- 
gan to make associations. 



184 THE ART OF STUDY 

One of the horses was an iron gray, the biggest horse 
and the biggest dunce in the team. He did not know 
enough to "stand over" when any one was feeding him; 
did not know enough to keep his feet off the driver's in 
the stall. But amazing intelligence appeared at sundown. 
No sooner did he feel the tightening bit that meant "turn 
into the furrow" than it dawned on him that the stable, 
with rest and food, was half a mile away. 

On that turn he always led the way with a semi-mi- 
raculous action of his long legs and clumsy feet. He al- 
most pulled the other four horses and the plow and driver 
half a mile at greater speed than I could worry out of 
him under the lash at any other time of day. He always 
reached the stable in a wringing sweat. The great gray 
beast looms up before me now, at the end of fifteen years ; 
the quality of his intelligence was so impressive that even 
now, whenever I think of him, I brace myself in imagina- 
tion against the side of the stall in physical argument 
with the brute that had "reasoning power" enough to 
recognize quitting time, but could not bide his time about 
getting home. 

Much of the reasoning that we do is of the same na- 
ture as That done by the stupid laborer when he hears the 
dinner-horn, and by the stupid horse. In such cases, sev- 
eral things occur together so often that they become 
closely associated in memory. Apparently there is little 
more involved here than association by contiguity, which 
mental power men and beasts no doubt possess in com- 
mon. 



REASONING: ILLUSTRATIONS 185 

The kind of reasoning displayed here is adapted 
to the dead and dreary routine of any kind of life that 
knows no change but that of endless repetition. In 
these conditions it is effective, and enough to secure 
the practical comfort of man and beast. There is no 
mental strain in such a mental performance, nor any 
spiritual exuberance either. The joy is a low-grade, 
physical one. 

It is the reasoning of routine, but not of emer- 
gency. The horn might blow near the noon hour be- 
cause the fat in the pan had caught fire and the house 
was burning; or the driver might conclude to make 
one more round in the gloaming in order to finish a 
"land." Such occasional accidents severely jar the com- 
fortable mental combination. But subsequent regular- 
ity with which certain things always occur together and 
the strong force of habit immediately restore the men- 
tal equanimity. 

But if the "accidental variations" become so nu- 
merous as to make the habitual associations uncertain, 
man and beast may both lose hold of the real connections 
between things. Instinct and the force of habit- reduce 
enormously the tax upon our reasoning powers because 
they take absolute control of all the routine elements 
of our lives, and make them steadily and monotonously 
repeat themselves. But what a crisis comes when a 
sudden and unannounced change of the common cir- 
cumstances arises, what ridiculous situations habit then 



186 THE ART OF STUDY 

creates, — before attention has been attracted and rea- 
son has had opportunity to reconsider the general situ- 
ation ! It is when such accidental variations become 
common that a higher type of reasoning is required. The 
higher life is not merely one of routine, but of emergen- 
cies also, of new combinations leading to new results. It 
is the power to anticipate and provide for these that marks 
the higher levels of human reasoning. 

A few illustrations will help to make clear the in- 
creasing complexity of problems that the mind has to 
deal with. If a dog should lie down near his master 
while the latter digs a hole in the ground, even the dog 
would connect his master's presence in the hole with 
the dirt that flies out at measured intervals. If he 
should afterwards happen upon the hole in his master's 
absence he would probably not say to himself, "Ah! a 
hole; this pile of dirt came out of it; this is the work 
of man." A dog may be able to generalize in this fashion 
but we have no proof that he would do so. But it would 
be very dog-like for him to mount the heap of dirt, cock 
his head and ears, and look into the hole for his master. 
The hole and the dirt suggest his master because his 
master is associated with those things in the dog's ex- 
perience. The next time he sees two of the elements 
in the combination — the hole and the dirt — he looks for 
the third, his master. 

If a man should see a hole with a pile of dirt be- 
side it, he would infer that someone had been digging 



REASONING: ILLUSTRATIONS 187 

there, and would feel very certain about it. If he should 
see dirt suddenly flying out of the hole he would infer 
at once that a man was there and at work. Flying dirt 
would be the "proof.'' It is an effect, and the usual 
agent, a man, is assumed without hesitation as the 
cause. The observer might peer into the hole; but it 
is not likely that he would do it for the purpose of con- 
vincing himself that a man was there. He knows that 
well enough already. If he looks in, it will probably be 
merely to find out what man it is, and why the work 
is being done. 

The inference that a man is working below is based 
on frequent previous observations of the same combina- 
tion. Man, hole, flying dirt, have all been seen before. 
It is always probable — practically certain — that com- 
binations observed before, will hold true again; when 
part of the facts are observed the rest are inferred. 
The certainty is due to the observer's previous experi- 
ence of the same kind of thing. 

When we come to deal with cases, however, in which 
there has been no previous direct observation, the prob- 
lem is no longer so simple and direct; and what is worse, 
the mind may not recognize that there is any problem 
at all. Suppose, for example, a great cliff of hard,, 
flinty quartzite like that on the shore of Devil's Lake, 
Wisconsin, with a big talus of broken rock sloping away 
at its base. Now I will venture the assertion that very 
many men and women, not necessarily stupid, have seen 



188 THE ART OF STUDY 

them both, and have thought of the former as being very 
high, and of the latter as extending to the water; but 
without ever thinking of cliff and talus together and 
their connection with each other; and much less have 
they come, by seeing these, to do any general thinking 
about cliffs and the inevitable talus of rock and soil at 
their base. The mere fact that two things are close 
together gives no assurance that the mind will work out 
any connection between them. There stands the cliff 
and there lies the talus, dead, inert, staring facts. 

But if any untutored man of fairly good intellect 
were asked, "Why is the talus there?" if, in other 
words, he were startled by the suggestion of a connection 
between them, the chances are that he would give a cor- 
rect answer, that the pieces had broken and fallen from 
the face of the cliff, and had heaped up in a sloping mass 
at its foot. He would look, and then he would see above 
him, pieces large and small, loose or nearly so, and he 
might then even stand in expectation of seeing one fall. 
Everything would be full of suggestion to him, and 
the relation of the talus to the cliff would be perfectly 
plain, although he might never have seen the combina- 
tion before. But the directness with which he reaches 
the conclusion, and its apparent certainty are based upon 
lifelong previous experience. Observations that have 
left no tangible record in the memory, the bricks and 
luortar of unremembered experience form the road-bed 
of his way of thinhing. He may not recall at all that 



REASONING: ILLUSTRATIONS 189 

lie has seen thousands of things fall, as wood from a 
corded heap, or sand on a steep incline; none of these 
things may be remembered when he looks at the talus, 
but all of these experiences, unwittingly to him, have 
been built into the foundation of his thinking. They 
form the basis of "common sense'^ by means of which he 
reaches his conclusions. 

For us the chief interest of the above examples lies 
in the fact that nearly all men would attend spontane- 
ously to dirt flying from a hole in the ground, because 
the process goes on before their eyes. All they need to 
do is to look; it is no tax on tHe brain. But probably 
comparatively few who have seen that cliff and talus 
have ever thought at all about the relation of the one 
to the other. Everything is at perfect rest as if things 
had been thus since the morning of creation; and the 
mind remains a blank. A singing mosquito can always 
get a hearing; but the vast and silent witnesses of na- 
ture are the last to get attention. They have no bills 
to puncture us with ; we have no special organ — no higher 
sense — that lets in the mighty truths. They come but 
slowly by the devious and much obstructed paths of men- 
tal effort. 

But even in this problem of the cliff and its talus, 
the elements are simple and close at hand. When time 
enough has been allowed the rest is easy thinking. Eea- 
soning on the subject is likely to be right reasoning. But 
suppose the case of a rock concerning which nothing is 



190 THE ART OF STUDY 

known nor can be directly inferred — the time when 
it came, the place that it came from, and the way in 
which it came — time, space and the necessary force all 
a mystery. 

There is a big black rock — "Lone Eock" — a thing 
of many tons that lies partly exposed and no one knows 
how deeply imbedded high up on the shrubby bank of 
a mountain stream in a little canyon in California, with 
no other rock like it in the neighborhood. The loose 
rocks in the creek and on the banks are easily accounted 
for; they came from the neighboring cliffs. It certain- 
ly is not native in the place where it lies ; it is a stranger, 
and a puzzle. Such a phenomenon is strange enough 
to attract some attention. And it is around this kind 
of problem that the human mind delights to play in the 
lurid and ineffective lightning flashes of opinion and 
theory. 

We are all much more prone than we like to admit, 
to use explanations that are second hand. It is inevi- 
table that we should undertake to explain the unknown 
by the kno^vn. Xow we all have faith in a rock's ability 
to fall. And the only explanation that I ever heard from 
either man or boy about the presence of Lone Eock in 
that place was that it was a meteorile: it had fallen 
there. 

The explanation had the virtue of slight plausibility. 
Meteorites do fall. None who gave the explanation were 
handicapped by any actual knowledge of meteorites. In 



REASONING: ILLUSTRATIONS 191 

fact, a rock that had fallen out of the universe into a 
creek bed would naturally be black. Those who under- 
took to explain its presence knew nothing about the 
Tocks any distance from that neighborhood; and any- 
way, rocks like that would not move horizontally; so it 
must have fallen. But I had seen in museums meteor- 
ites that had actually fallen; was badly contaminated 
with geological doctrines and the notion that things in 
this world are less prone to fall into place than they are 
to be carried or pushed into place; and had in my life 
seen other blue-black rock not unlike this particular one. 
In short, having on hand a considerable stock of trouble- 
some information and theory, I rejected the meteorite 
doctrine and believed that Lone Eock was of the "earth, 
earthy." 

Its getting there was a prehistoric fact and could 
not be proved by witnesses. But I had in mind a theory 
of how it got there, and a large, indefinite feeling of the 
distant wlien. My little boy and I had given ourselves 
a roving commission to have fun and find out things in 
that general neighborhood during two summer months, 
and I thought it might help him intellectually if he 
helped me to solve the problem of Lone Eock. It might 
be possible to determine whence it came. Men are hung 
for things that no one ever saw them do; so we might 
be able to tell whence this rock was borne. 

We began by making a big assumption — that it came 
down stream. This bald assumption gave us no mental 



192 THE ART OF STUDY 

discomfort, it had no competitors. It seemed to be the 
only possible one. To his mind it was the natural thing 
to assume, and the theory that I had framed required it. 
One day we left camp, several miles above the Rock, and 
traveled over the hills to the upper reaches of the wild 
and tortuous stream-bed. There was no wild and tor- 
tuous stream, only occasional pools. I mention this fact 
to show how much we used our faith to complete our 
"knowledge," how much we inferred about things that 
we never saw, that were only suggested by circumstan- 
tial evidence. Still, we knew it was the bed of a stream, 
though we had never seen running water in its upper 
reaches. 

We had not gone far down the bed, when we came 
upon a great formation of blue-black rock, cut through 
by the rushing stream that we never saw, and reaching 
back under the hills. Along the sides of the stream 
gigantic blocks of it, broken loose from the solid for- 
mation, but only a little out of place and scarcely water- 
worn, lay ready, as it were, to be carried off by some 
mighty force. As we passed out from between these 
great blocks of blue-black rock, there passed into our 
minds the "certainty" that we had found the native seat 
of Lone Rock. Just below the down-stream edge of the 
formation, we still found large boulders of it, a little 
more water and weather-worn. 

Even the little boy could believe that such large 
rocks could be pushed somehow so short a distance; in 



REASONING: ILLUSTRATIONS 193 

fact, he could see that they must have leen, because there 
was the big formation from which they came, and there 
they lay, dowoi hill from home. He knew something 
about the demi-gods of Greece and their ability to move 
things, but we had carefully excluded them from con- 
sideration. He had rolled some quite heavy rocks down 
hill himself, but had never seen at work any force capable 
of moving such as these. With the help of a few sug- 
gestions about floods of water and frozen jams of ice and 
logs and trees he began to conceive of natural powers 
great enough to move big rocks; and in a little while 
he was as wild a speculator and as active a geologist as 
any one, young or old, that I ever saw. When once his 
mind had taken the first short step of moving a big rock 
a little way down hill, he realized that more of the same 
kind of push in the same direction would account for 
Lone Eock several miles below. 

Now all that has been said about Lone Eock sounds 
like what it really is: the philosophy of an eleven year 
old boy. He moved swiftly and with a fair degree of 
certainty toward a great geological theory and the solu- 
tion of a hard problem for which most men and boys 
gave an explanation without investigation. 

But not even the first step could have been taken 
without the friendly push of suggestion. With this 
help, judiciously and sparingly given, he was aggressive 
enough in looking for facts and making explanations. 

It was after he had grasped the general doctrine of 



194 THE ART OF STUDY 

ice and water action that he became a really active and 
interested observer. When he understood, in a meas- 
ure, the cause, he could see a multitude of effects all 
about him, which otherwise he would never have seen 
at all; and he became even in the course of half a day 
tolerably expert in explaining what he saw, and showed 
especially a very striking increase in his power of obser- 
vation. Having a little knowledge of the probable cause 
of these things gave him second-sight. 

Without help he would have been helpless. But in 
what would I have been better off than he in the presence 
of the problem of Lone Eock, if I had not first had sugges- 
tions from others such as I gave him? There lay the 
hard and cold and homeless, friendless fact. I could 
probably have done no more with it than he. It is quite 
likely that I would not only not have inferred a reason- 
able explanation, but would not even have sought seri- 
ously for one. If I had never heard of the glacial period 
and learned something of ice and water action and of all 
the consequences that these involve, I would have stood 
before the big, black mystery as helpless as my little boy. 

The most important lesson that was driven home to 
him that day so that it may stay with him through life, 
was the impression that everything that he saw about 
him was an effect, produced by some cause capable of pro- 
ducing it. The desire to explain things or have them 
explained — the mind-hunger for truth — grew apace for 



REASONING: ILLUSTRATIONS 195 

half a day. His childish powers discovered themselves — 
things could be explained, and he could at least struggle 
with such problems although he blundered. 



196 THE ART OF STUDY 



CHAPTER XVIII. 
reasoning: a larger problem. 

Let us see whether the world at large and the best 
minds in it have a more direct and certain way of reach- 
ing explanations than my little boy and I had. Take 
the same kind of problem that we tried to solve in the 
creek-bed. 

Plowmen had picked up bits of native copper scores 
and even hundreds of miles south of the Lake Superior 
copper-bearing formations; and they inferred that In- 
dians had dropped them where they were found. The 
Indians themselves had from time immemorial caught 
fish and gathered wild rice on the thousands of lakes 
of northern Wisconsin and Minnesota, without perhaps 
even wondering at their existence or their number. That 
was their world. They neither knew nor cared whether 
there might be fewer lakes of different character in the 
world or even a few hundred miles from where they Jived. 

The white lumbermen of the same region cut the 
marsh hay off the myriad swamps for winter use in the 
logging camps knowing and caring nothing about how 
the country came to be a land of swamps. The farm- 



REASONING: A LARGER PROBLEM 197 

ers and especially the farmer boys of Canada and the 
northern part of the United States have gathered the 
stones on their rocky farms and have built them into 
long stone walls without knowing what it was that scat- 
tered them so mischievously. They thought of them 
only as a perennial cause of back-ache. The few that 
did stop to wonder how they came there were no wiser 
at the last than at the first. Limpid lakes with no out- 
let, scenery that ought to rouse thought in any man, 
farmer or poet or philosopher; the grooved and polished 
rocks, clay soils and bedded gravels, lakes and swamps 
and ancient beaches, both in America and Europe, sent 
up their mute appeal to be recognized and explained. 

But the human mind, that wizard of the universe, 
went on in its sordid career of catching fish and raising 
grain and herding cattle to satisfy the stomach; or in- 
dulged in the semi-glorious task of spilling blood and 
compelling others to do its bidding and its labors. No 
man dreamed that all these things were due to one great 
force that had "worked over" the face of the northern 
earth. How could they imagine that things so different 
from each other were in any way related? It is not 
probable that anyone ever would have dreamed that won- 
derful truth if someone had not at some time and some- 
where seen the cause itself at work. 

If a little boy can in half a day, with the help of 
judicious suggestion, make such apparently large scien- 
tific strides, why did it take the intellect of Europe all 



198 THE ART OF STUDY 

the ages until the first half of the nineteenth century to 
find out how the great erratic blocE:s of Alpine rock got 
across the valleys of the Ehone and Aar from the Alps to 
the slopes and even summits of the Jura Mountains? 
It is so easy to get information out of books, and to 
understand what we are told that we marvel at the world 
for being so slow in finding out big truths. With a little 
suggestion and guidance we can grasp a big principle and 
revel in its consequences even in half a day. Why should 
the mind of the world be so dull of penetration as not 
to get even a glimpse of a great truth until ages have 
rolled away and whole races of men have delved in and 
trodden upon and lived and died upon and been buried 
in the mute, magnificent evidence that there was a gla- 
cial period in the world's history? 

The difference is all due to the fact that if one can 
see the cause that produces a thing at work on the spot, 
or has seen it produce similar results elsewhere, or has 
had its action explained to him so that he gets a con- 
ception of how the effects were produced, the mind has 
an extremely easy task to perform. Time and patience 
and industry will clear up all the facts. The theory of 
how the effects were produced throws light on every new 
fact that is observed. It is a lamp to the intellect; it 
lights things up so they can be seen and then explained. 
That is why it was so easy for me to investigate the 
origin of Lone Eock and help a little boy grasp the the- 
ory and make the explanation for himself. It was not 



REASONING: A LARGER PROBLEM 199 

a stroke of genius; it was only applying a truth which 
others had discovered. 

But if the mind has never in any way been made 
aware of the cause that has produced the results that 
are noticed, if nothing whatever is known on the subject, 
how can it even begin to think about them correctly? 
What reason could man have given himself for suppos- 
ing that the distribution of the stray bits of copper, er- 
ratic rocks, boulder clays, sands and silts, the ancient 
fresh water beaches and the thousands of lakes and 
swamps of the cooler temperate zone were all effects of 
a single great cause? 

Men did the perfectly natural thing with all these 
facts. They never regarded them as having any connec- 
tion with one another. They gave the most reasonable 
explanation for each kind of fact. PloA\Tiien thought 
the Indians dropped the copper. A pious or even an 
impious farmer might suppose that the devil had strewn 
the stones afield for the discipline or annoyance of man- 
kind. The smaller facts like these would secure atten- 
tion and receive each its own separate explanation. But 
the larger facts were not likely to be seen at all. The 
peculiar distribution of lakes, the peculiar soils and scen- 
ery would not even be regarded as peculiar because they 
are so extensive. Our vision is too limited. The biggest 
facts escape our notice and the whole magnificent group 
of facts is not recognized as a group at all. When each 
little fact has received an explanation of its own, it is 



200 THE ART OF STUDY 

less likely than ever that we shall think of all the facts 
together as the effects of one cause. 

We do not see very much of all that is to be seen. 
But what we do actually see and think about at all the 
mind makes an effort to explain, whether with the help 
of ice and water action or of demigods and devils. In 
the presence of facts that we cannot understand we are 
like cattle — gaze awhile and turn away. But a fact that 
is once explained has perennial interest for us, even 
though the explanation is wrong, because it wakens 
thought in us. It pipes its simple little tune of truth 
in our ears until we feel the world is full of music. The 
intellectual hope of the world lies in the fact that we 
are prone to give explanations. If we were more care- 
ful in seeking them and less ready to accept the easiest 
and most striking one, truth would make much more 
rapid progress. Now let us see how the world ever 
came to hit upon the glacial theory as a general explana- 
tion of all the facts that have been mentioned. 

Both peasants and savants of Switzerland were 
acquainted with the glaciers. Their movements and 
their work had been given scientific attention. The 
problems of terminal and lateral moraines were no more 
difficult than that of talus and cliff described in a previ- 
ous chapter. The action of water at the foot of the 
glacier was a matter of direct observation. The cause 
and the effects were there together and could be observed 
in close connection. The ice carried the boulders and 



REASONING: A LARGER PROBLEM 201 

pushed the detritus and scored the rocks, and the water 
worked over and sorted and laid down the sand and peb- 
bles. 

The problem of the Alpine boulders over on the 
Jura Mountains was like that of Lone Eock. They 
were away from their native seat, with the cause of their 
removal gone. But they had not only gone down hill 
but up again on the other side of the valley. Charpen- 
tier, who had studied the alpine glaciers and their work 
in carrying and pushing rocks, in 1834 expressed the be- 
lief that those stray boulders on the Jura range had been 
carried from the Alps by glaciers which once extended 
across the intervening valley. This was a bold generali- 
zation. But it was only an extension of a force already 
known and well understood. That force was only called 
upon to act on a larger scale and in the same direction. 
Nothing new was added to the conception of a glacier 
except magnitude. Effects, the cause of which was ab- 
sent, were explained by inferring a cause well known and 
producing similar effects near hy. 

And now began a scientific marvel that is still, over 
half a century later, unrolling itself before the eyes of a 
waking and wondering world. At this point Louis 
Agassiz, the generalizer, became interested. He ex- 
pressed the belief that glaciers had not only crossed the 
valleys, but that ice had filled those valleys and covered 
the foot-hills, too, that the whole region had once been 
ice-bound, and that the present glaciers of the Alps are 



202 THE ART OF STUDY 

nothing more than retreating remnants. The evidence 
was there to support his view. Then he went to Scot- 
land, where he and Buckland studied half a dozen areas 
that revealed all the characteristic evidence of glacial 
action. 

The magic key that unlocked this great new world 
of glacial geology had to be made in a glacier country. 
As soon as the effects of glacial action were understood, 
and when once it was known that those effects existed 
where glaciers no longer were, ah! then, having eyes, 
men saw the evidence that they had blindly trampled on 
and waddled in for ages without knowing that it existed. 

Now we know that not only Switzerland and Scot- 
land but all of northern Europe and Canada and the 
northern United States and our western ranges are 
scarred and scored and written over and over like a pal- 
impsest with layer upon layer of unmistakable evidence 
of former glacial action. It was ice that covered the 
north temperate zone and grooved the solid rocks and 
scattered the boulders afield and sprinkled the bits of 
copper to southward and plowed out the lakes and 
dammed up and changed the river courses and wiped out 
scores of species of plants and animals and drove others 
out of their northern homes and left them stranded 
on the temperate mountain tops; that pushed up the 
gravelly hills and finally melted into water that made 
the great lake beaches where now are fields of waving 
grain. 



REASONING: A LARGER PROBLEM 203 

No romance can be written that would be more fas- 
cinating to a thoughtful student than the marvellous 
history of glacial geology. In the short time since Char- 
pentier made his suggestion a whole new science has de- 
veloped. The field to be covered is so vast, and the 
knowledge already wrought out so comprehensive that it 
requires years of training to make an expert glacial geol- 
ogist. 



204 THE ART OF STUDY 



CHAPTEE XIX. 

reasoning: how the mind struggles after a truth. 

The brief sketch of the glacial theory given in the 
last chapter shows how sound knowledge actually grows. 
It was chosen as an illustration because the subject is 
recent, its history short, its strides have been enormous, 
because it has explained a multitude of facts, some of 
which all men can see, and because the great existing 
glaciers of Alaska and the ice-fields of Greenland and 
the Antarctic continent are yielding and will yield still 
more important scientific knowledge by the light of which 
to interpret the evidence where ice no longer exists. 

Before the cause was recognized, most of the facts 
were not recognized at all. The few that attracted at- 
tention were given, each its separate explanation. In 
the absence of the true cause, how could the mind con- 
ceive of any connection between things so different as 
parallel grooves in the solid rock, scattered bits of copper, 
and the stranding of cold-temperate species of plants 
and animals on the high mountains in the temperate 
regions ? No amount of study of the effects would avail ; 
it would not be known what effects belonged together. 
Until the cause itself could be seen at work, there could 



REASONING: HOW THE MIND STRUGGLES 205 

be no hope of seeing the effects it had produced in regions 
where it was no longer present. 

It was not only the common people who did not 
see and understand; the best trained scientific investi- 
gators trampled on the evidence without seeing it. Each 
little shred of remarkable evidence that was seen, was 
explained by some cause already known. When one is 
once on the wrong track in making explanations, they 
become more and more elaborate and complex, like the 
Ptolemaic system of astronomy, instead of more simple 
and straightforward. It is only when the mind is mov- 
ing toward the solid ground of truth that explanations 
grow more and more simple and satisfactory; and the^ 
strangely different facts are all brought into beautiful 
harmony. 

The most striking effect that the introduction of 
the glacial theory produced was that it enabled men to 
see. As soon as the cause was understood the scenery^ 
of the old glacial region was viewed through new eyes 
and interpreted. The beaches of ancient and vast fresh 
water lakes could be traced where before there were only 
unmeaning ridges; old and choked-up river courses were 
traced where nothing at all was seen before. Wild rice 
and marsh hay and fishing and duck-hunting could now 
be seen to be related to one another and the theory. 
The great mass of diverse facts becomes a web of circum- 
stantial evidence, as soon as the cause is understood. 

When a small boy exclaims, ^Tapa, I have added' 



206 THE ART OF STUDY 

three numbers together and the sum is forty; what are 
the numbers?'' he knows that he has the easy end of the 
task and that his fatlier may never be able to tell what 
numbers he used. Most of the problems of nature and 
of life are presented to us in much the same way. Na- 
ture makes the combinations and then usually wipes the 
slate, leaving nothing but the results. Our task is, — 
given the results, to find the causes; given the answers, 
to find the numbers that were used. Take, for example, 
this simple little puzzle: 



"Never did I rob a china shop or steal a chop in the 
market, but one day, l)ick, his chum, Annie, and I set 
out on a marauding expedition. Dick said he would 
lasso us, at which we laughed, but it made my heart 
wag nervously. Then we found Flo Marsh and Ella Eoss 
m idle chat engaged, and calling Ella and Flo toward 
us, we invited them to go with us, but they declined. We 
berated them soundly, as Esau berated his brother, Flo 
sat like a cherub in injured innocence. 'Let's stop in 
here,' said I, *^for Harry Bell.' 'In I go,' replied Dick, 
but he soon returned, saying he feared he would be stung 
by a bee or an asp. 'Oh, ridiculous,' I cried, 'A bee, 
tho' venturesome, may not sting you, and anyway, it is 
said to bring luck.' But Dick, crying 'Ou!' nodded his 
head at me and said, 'Eob, Alf, Ernest, and all the rest 
of you, I'm going home.' " 



REASONING: HOW THE MIND STRUGGLES 207 

The maker of the puzzle decided to bury a list of 
famous names, and wrote out a more or less sensible 
combination of words, among which the names are con- 
cealed. His task was direct, synthetic. Anyone able to 
write could do it in some fashion. He 'would not even 
have to know the names of musical composers in ad- 
vance. He could pick them at random, to suit his de- 
sires, from a music book. 

The task of the guesser is of an entirely different 
nature. The puzzle is very simple both on account of 
its nature and on account of the shallow way in which 
the names are ^^uried." But it requires some skill in 
dealing with such things and some knowledge of musical 
matters even to make a beginning. Without these, there 
is no way to start. Suppose one is not acquainted with 
the names involved. How can he recognize them? Un- 
der such conditions the names Beethoven, Chopin, Ros- 
sini, Wagner, and the rest could never be discovered. 
Nor is it an easy matter to appeal to books. Perhaps 
that particular combination of names could not be found 
in any available book outside of a biography of music. 
Even with the latter book, it would require very, very 
long study to pick out the right names both in the book 
and in the puzzle and bring them together. 

Anyone having any knowledge of music can pick 
out the names readily, because Wagner and Beethoven 
are names that he would surely know. But we are work- 
ing now under the supposition that the guesser does not 



208 THE ART OF STUDY 

know so much as this. Let us consider the puzzle from 
the latter standpoint. To begin with, the whole popu- 
lation of the earth might read the puzzle and not recog- 
nize that it is one. Telling a person that there is a 
puzzle is what makes a guesser out of him. It makes 
him look for something. But even then he would be at 
an utter loss. To get him started at all it would be nec- 
essary to tell him what kind of a puzzle it is; what sort 
of hidden thing he must look for. If one stops to think, 
it is easy to see that the largest and hardest part of the 
work has to be done in advance in order to make even a 
guesser out of a person. A little reflection on so sim- 
ple a thing will lead most of us to pass milder judg- 
ment on the "stupidity" of the world for not seeing and 
learning things faster and reasoning better. 

When once the nature of the problem is understood, 
the mind begins to feel about for solid footing. It seeks 
all the time to escape from the attitude of guesser and 
to take up the position of a maker of the puzzle. Prob- 
ably the first step will be the assumption that the names 
are famous. Here at the very outset appeal is made 
to a probable "general truth" in order to get at particu- 
lar facts. In a biography of music, the famous names 
will have the longest biographies, so by the help of this 
general assumption the guesser will know in advance 
which names to pounce upon. The mind has already 
departed a long way from the position of guesser. It is 
trying now to be a maker of the puzzle. 



REASONING: HOW THE MIND STRUGGLES 209 

But it will require skill and some knowledge of good 
English to get help from the written words. Assuming 
the guesser has some skill and training in English, he 
can see "indications." When he reads the words "my 
heart wag nervously," and "a bee, tho' venturesome," he 
will make a careful examination as surely as a cat will 
stalk a gopher-hole. He knows those expressions are 
unusual English, and will look in those connections for 
the names. In this fashion the puzzle is solved. The 
guesser at every step is making strenuous efforts to equip 
himself with the same knowledge that the maker of the 
puzzle had; then he can see what is in the puzzle. 

Take a simple problem in algebra. Suppose a stu- 
dent is given no rule to go by, but is simply told to fac- 
tor x'^-\-2xy-\-y'^. He must know a good deal in advance 
about numbers, quantities, signs and factors before he 
can do anything at all with this specific problem. If 
he knows that it is a product the facts begin to look 
suggestive. He knows that x^ is x times x, and y"^ is y 
times y. The mind would instantly try in some way to 
put these factors together. In other words, the student 
turns himself into a multiplier, not a divider. He has 
a theory and tries it. He may make many mistakes. 
But he would follow the same plan with variations as if 
that were the fundamental law of search. Which it is. 
He would find at last that the factors are (x-'ry) (x-{-y). 
But he would also find that there is no royal road to the 
truth. He is asked to analyze a product, and he does 



210 THE ART OF STUDY 

it by a series of efforts at synthesis, at putting things 
together, at producing the product. His progress would 
be rapid in proportion as he could shift his position from 
that of analyzer to that of combiner. 

Just as soon as this one problem is solved he can 
draw a general truth out of it. The sum of two quanti- 
ties multiplied by itself, equals the sum of their squares 
plus twice the product of the quantities. From that mo- 
ment he is a deductive philosopher. He is in possession 
of a general principle and he works it on every new case 
as savagely as if he were the worst old deductive debater 
of mediaeval times. This example has furnished him 
with a type. Every new problem is treated as a member 
of a class of problems under a general rule. The mind 
has not merely discovered a new fact. It has opened 
up a whole new field of investigation. Now it has the 
power to recognize products, can search for other cases, 
and treat them at once and effectively as particular 
cases under an established rule. 

Now let us recall the glacial theory. Ages passed 
before men recognized that there was evidence to con- 
sider. A few remarkable things were noticed, but nobody 
knew what they were evidence of. Men gave to each re- 
markable fact a separate explanation and left the rest 
unobserved. The erratic rocks on the Jura Mountains 
were a puzzle. They came to be recognized as one, and 
that was a very long stride toward explanation. When a 
man arose who knew about the work of actual glaciers 



REASONING: HOW THE MIND STRUGGLES 211 

and also knew about the erratic blocks across the great 
valley, and thought of the two together, then science 
could put itself in the position of one knowing the cause 
and thinking of it as still acting. Charpentier extended 
glacial action to regions where it was no longer at work. 
Agassiz made another generalization, extended the prin- 
ciple over vast areas. Now, with the cause known, cer- 
tain things were always seen to occur in combination. 
They were seen because they were to be expected, if 
produced by such a cause. Men knew there was some- 
thing to look for, knew what it was like, and were in a 
mood to look for it. That is why glacial geology grew 
apace in so short a time. The facts could be explained 
by the new cause and could be explained in no other 
way. The mind had climbed up the hill and could now 
slide down. 



212 THE ART OF STUDY 



CHAPTEE XX. 

keasoning: its progress depends on recognition of 
similarities. 

The chances are all against anyone's recognizing a gen- 
eral truth or law at a hazard by merely looking at facts 
one at a time. Nor has anyone ever made much intel- 
lectual progress by gathering a miscellaneous lot of facts 
and then gazing at them. He might gaze thus for a cen- 
tury, and the larger his heap of facts became, the more 
confused and chaotic it would be. From somewhere and 
at some time must come a suggestion of some kind of 
connection between the new facts and facts that were 
known before. It does not require much of a sugges- 
tion to rouse the alert and sensitive mind into activity. 
If the state of expectant attention is well-developed and 
chronic, a hint may be enough to start one on a voyage 
of discovery. 

A little reflection upon the illustrations used in 
previous chapters will make it clear that our progress in 
reasoning is due to the recognition of similarities between 
things. Direct observation upon the glaciers assured 
men that certain facts always occurred together. The 
relation of cause and effect was actually observed. Now 



REASONING : RECOGNITION OF SIMILARITIES 213 

our minds and the universe are so constituted that we 
can infer the whole when we see a part. If we know that 
certain things always occur together, then, when we see 
part of the facts, we infer that the others are there or 
were there, even though we do not see them. The men- 
tal process amounts to this: certain things have always 
occurred together in our experience, and therefore they 
will occur grouped in that way again. 

When Charpentier announced that glaciers had car- 
ried the erratic blocks over onto the Jura slopes, he was 
merely inferring that because part of a certain group of 
facts was before him, the rest must have been there at 
some time. We feel certain that the relation of cause 
and effect is constant. If we have seen both cause and 
effect before, and then see some or all of the effects again, 
we feel sure that the cause also once existed. And if 
we see a cause at work we are confident that the effects 
are there. If part of the facts are missing we confidently 
hunt for them. The ingrained belief that similar effects 
are produced by similar causes brings about the organiza- 
tion of our knowledge on the highest plane of reasoning. 
The magic principle of association binds the facts to- 
gether with an unbreakable cord. Where boulder clay 
and copper drift are found, moraines and grooves in the 
rocks are likely to be, and ice must have been at some 
time. The mind is sure that its fundamental laws of 
association cannot lead it far astray. 

It is this recognition of identity that makes it possi- 



214 THE ART OF STUDY 

ble for us to reach out into the unknown and explain 
new facts at all. The far-reaching similarities of na- 
ture make possible our mental groupings of facts and 
give us intellectual mastery. The power, first of detect- 
ing similarities and then of looking for them elsewhere, 
underlies the power to reason. It is the basis of the 
simplest inferences of the child^ and of the most subtle 
and far-reaching conclusions of the trained scientific en- 
quirer. The difference lies in the quality and thorough- 
ness of the process. 

And this association must always be found between a 
fact that is already known and one that is new. It is 
extremely unlikely that anyone will derive much valuable 
knowledge merely from comparing two or more strange 
things entirely by guess. Step by step each new fact 
is assimilated with old ones already known. With the 
addition of new knowledge the old conceptions are modi- 
fied, improved and enlarged. The theory of glacial ac- 
tion is very different now from what it was sixty years 
ago. But at every step, each new fact was interpreted 
with the help of the body of knowledge already on hand. 

It has often been said that the Greek and Roman 
intellects were in all respects the equals of the modern 
mind. That is doubtless true. But we have the great ad- 
vantage of two thousand years of accumulated knowl- 
edge. Human power depends on the tools it has to work 
with. Our knowledge is vastly greater and more accurate 



REASONING: RECOGNITION OF SIMILARITIES 215 

than theirs was; and our appliances for doing work are 
vastly better and more numerons. 

We can build only with the help of what is already 
known. Every new act, every uttered word is colored 
by what has gone before in the life. We can tell from 
a man^s talk what his training has been; from his fig- 
ures of speech where he came from and with Avhat sort 
of work he has always busied himself; from the senti- 
ments he expresses, the manner of his moral life in the 
past. The pupil is usually a disciple of his teacher. 
The son generally votes as his father voted. We think 
and speak and act, always with the past as a basis. We 
cannot cut loose from past knowledge and opinion, and 
we would not if we could. For it provides us with our 
only possible starting points of thought. 

The unscholarly mind has no settled purpose con- 
cerning its facts. There is no guiding principle, no gen- 
eral motive in the thinking, no desire to place each fact 
in its right relations from the outset. But after all, 
as the wind unwittingly and in rude fashion separates 
the dead leaves and groups them in hollows and fence 
corners and leaves the green ones in groups on the trees, 
so the inborn laws of mental action tend to work over 
and reduce to order the chaotic knowledge that tumbles 
hap-hazard upon the attention of the individual. He 
neither seeks facts systematically nor takes care of them 
after they come to him. But slowly out of the chaos 
there grows, without his effort, a crude system of thought. 



216 THE ART OF STUDY 

Some people have this feeling for mental order more 
strongly developed than others. Their minds instinct- 
ively recognize similarities without ever consciously for- 
mulating what they do. They become fairly good spell- 
ers, even though they never learned the rules of spelling. 
They cannot tell why it is so ; but it is because they have 
a strong feeling for similarities. They seem to act ac- 
cording to general rules that they never learned nor 
consciously stated to themselves. Even in the unschol- 
arly mind the laws of thought keep chaos at bay by 
grouping facts according to their similarities and slowly 
working out explanations. But it is the student's ac- 
knowledged business to attend consciously and purposely 
to this matter, and reduce his knowledge, so far as lies 
in his power, by reasoning about it as fast as he accumu- 
lates it. 

A vast body of human knowledge, much of the most 
important that we guide our lives by, is only dimly un- 
derstood or wholly unexplained. Many of the old prov- 
erbs told truths that experience had found to be so, but 
which were not comprehended. The connection between 
the tides and the moon was observed without any knowl- 
edge of gravitation. The causal relation between a low- 
ering morning and a rainy day needed not be understood 
at all to make the knowledge practically effective. The 
modern weather bureau can give reasons and make more 
accurate predictions, but the value of the original obser- 
vation cannot be belittled. 



REASONING: RECOGNITION OF SIMILARITIES 217 

Such knowledge as that described above is empirical. 
It has value, but is unexplained. The first knowledge 
of each individual and the earliest and most important 
practical knowledge of the race was of this kind. Cer- 
tain connections between facts were observed, as that fire 
hardens brick as well as wooden spear-points. But no 
attempt was made, nor is any attempt usually made even 
now to give a scientific explanation of the process. For 
practical purposes it is not necessary. The bulk of hu- 
manity lives by the light of such empirical knowledge. 

Quinine has long been known to be a specific for 
malaria ; and suffering humanity has gratefully swallowed 
the bitter medicine without knowing why it produces its 
effects. Physicians understood it no better than the 
burning and shivering victim. But humanity, not know- 
ing the cause of the disease, took the medicine, went 
straightway and laid itself down where the infection con- 
tinued its deadly work. Pitiful sight, in the light of 
recent science. Now what has happened? Eeason, the 
piercing weapon of scientific investigation, has solved the 
mystery. Science had done what it could to study the 
disease after the victim was sick. Much was known about 
the stages of the disease and the changes in the blood 
that were due to the infection. Ifow the cause is known. 
Malaria is due to a parasite that passes through part 
of its development in man and part in certain species 
of mosquito. The disease is transmitted from an old 
to a new victim by the mosquito. 



218 THE ART OF STUDY 

Quinine is still valuable. But the guilty mosquitos 
(genus Anopheles) exist wherever there is malaria; and 
now that the causal relations of the disease are under- 
stood^ prevention is likely to outdo the business of curing 
malaria. Mosquito-breeding rain-barrels, pools of stag- 
nant water, and swamps are receiving attention now. 
Systematic withdrawal at nightfall into mosquito-proof 
houses by itself will secure human beings against malaria 
in the deadly Campagna near Eome. A thin sheet of 
petroleum floating on a water-surface closes the breath- 
ing pores of the mosquito larvae and kills them before 
they leave the water. Drainage of standing pools and 
swamps removes mosquitos and malaria at a single stroke. 

The former scraps of empirical knowledge on the 
subject seem almost contemptible now. The new truth 
not merely adds knowledge to the old. It explains what 
was IvQown and changes the whole point of view. Now 
the world's knowledge of malaria is rational. It under- 
stands the causal relations. Man or mosquito must con- 
quer, because the enemy is in sight; there will be no 
more "shelling the woods.'' And the chances are all 
against the mosquito. Its power will be badly crippled 
if it cannot be destroyed. Knowledge of the subject is 
now of a different kind. 

What has been done for malaria has been done for 
yellow fever. The mosquito is guilty. Hitherto, men 
have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars disinfecting 
persons and clothing and ships. They labored blindly, 



REASONING : RECOGNITION OF SIMILARITIES 219^ 

because there was no rational knowledge of the disease. 
The facts were not explained till their cause was known.. 
And in assailing the problem of yellow fever, science used 
the new knowledge about malaria. The light of one new 
truth leads to others like it. The bond of similarity 
made possible the extension of rational knowledge to a 
new subject. 

In the progress of the individual mind, as well as in 
the experience of the race, empirical, unexplained knowl- 
edge, must give place to rational knowledge. The causal 
relations of facts to each other must be understood and 
expressed in general principles. This transformation 
of partial, accidental, but valuable knowledge into ra- 
tional and thoroughly organized knowledge, goes on as 
long as there is mental progress in the individual or the- 
race. When it ceases, growth is at an end. The thinker 
drops back to the level of the animal and the creature of 
habit. 

It is a vital concern of the student to keep up stead- 
ily the process of reducing his knowledge to a rational 
state, in which all the facts are brought into their true 
relations with each other. The constant temptation of 
living things is to become parasites. Even the eagle is 
willing to let the hawk catch the fish and then help him- 
self to it. The quickest and largest results with the least 
effort is a guide of life to which students, like all others, 
fall victims. Accepting information ready-made, ex- 
plained, organized under principles, and applied, is fol- 



220 THE ART OF STUDY 

lowing the lines of least resistance. Originality, the spirit 
of research, deciphering the hidden meaning of things, is 
following the lines of greatest resistance. But the two 
methods do not result merely in a different quantity of 
knowledge : the latter produces an entirely different kind. 

We cannot, of course, free ourselves from the work 
that others have done before us, and the opinions they 
have held. While we profit by them abundantly, we are 
also in a real sense their slaves. And with so great a 
mass of knowledge and opinion ready-made, we are very 
prone to accept them without a serious review of their 
value. The structure of knowledge and opinion that has 
been reared by humanity is a mighty heritage of intel- 
lectual strength transmitted to us. But every student, 
to save his intellectual manhood, must hold both fact and 
opinion at arm's length long enough to examine it care- 
fully and determine its value to him. 

Lessing, in a hot religious debate, said more than a 
hundred years ago, "If God held in His right hand all 
truth and in his left the lone but ever active desire for 
truth, though coupled with the condition that I should 
keep forever falling into error, and should say to me, 
Thoose,' I should seize his left hand and say, father, 
give, pure truth is after all only for thee alone.' " The 
question with us all finally narrows itself to this: Shall 
we accept our opinions and facts in bulk on the authority 
of others, or shall we be habitual searchers after truth 
under the constant liability and fear of making mistakes? 



REASONING : RECOGNITION OF SIMILARITIES 221 

The test of the student's strength is the amount of 
independent energy with which he throws his reasoning 
powers upon the problems that are presented to him. If 
the subject to be studied is the arterial system of a mam- 
mal, and the place is a laboratory, and the teacher says, 
"Catch a live cat and work out its arterial system," and 
then puts his feet on the table and reads the report of 
the latest dog-show, the student has just cause for com- 
plaint, because there is none of the preliminary sug- 
gestion without which none of us can make a start. If, 
on the other hand, all the preliminary work is done for 
the student, which is often easier for the teacher, and he 
is provided with a book that gives detailed directions for 
every step, the student will be so perfectly guided that 
the faint impulses to originality are smothered. If ev- 
ery branch of the arterial system is described, its course 
explained, and even what to cut and what not to cut is 
carefully told in detail, the net result of a day's work, 
even for a good student, is likely to be the summing up : 
"Yes, it is just as the book says." Then he "goeth his 
way, and straightway forgetteth." 

It is initial ignorance of where to look and how to 
take the preliminary steps that kills progress and the de- 
sire for it. But if the student is shown how to prepare 
the animal without destroying the very parts he is to 
study, and has the aorta pointed out to him, all the rest 
should be within his reach. If left to himself, he would 
have to use his reason as well as his scalpel in finding the 



222 THE ART OF STUDY 

branches, at every touch of the knife, at every clip of the 
scissors. When he had finished he might not be able 
to give the names of all the parts ; but he would know his 
subject so well that if it were necessary he could give good 
names to them himself. Instead of forgetting what he 
had done, there would be an imperishable addition to his 
knowledge because there was lively reasoning at its birth. 
AYork thus done is valuable because it is transfused with 
thought. The slavery, parasitism, intellectual degenera- 
tion is due to constant assistance. Without it, only half 
as much work may be done, but the results will be ten- 
fold more valuable; and a hundredfold more intellectual 
power is developed if the student works out the problem 
with his own head as well as with his own hands. It is 
hard at first. But after a little the joy of working grows 
and there is a glow of feeling that drives the hands and 
the head to success. Error and failure become only in- 
cidents. 

This method is difficult to apply, but its fruit is 
easily recognized. It alone can give the student the last- 
ing impression that everything — every word in a sentence, 
every letter in a word, the shape and size and place of 
every pebble, every sound of nature, every shade of color 
in every flower's petals, every tint in the ever-changing 
sky — is full of significance, is a record of forces that have 
been and are still at work. The mind early loses its art- 
less inquisitiveness, and falls into the dull routine of 



REASONING : RECOGNITION OF SIMILARITIES 223 

habit, unless it is kept awake by the process of real, per- 
sonal investigation. 

One of the most permanent convictions imbedded in 
great productive minds, in all fields of learning, is this, 
that all things need to be explained and that sooner or 
later explanations can be given. Darwin and Tyndall, 
Faraday and Von Baer and all their kind were alive with 
the feeling that all the facts around them were written 
records, that they had a truth to tell which could be in- 
terpreted by whoever had eyes to see. Such men trained 
their great powers on thousands of little things which 
others had seen before them but had not tried to under- 
stand. This intense sensitiveness to the lisping, whisper- 
ing, truth-telling and truth-concealing nature about us 
is a great gift, and intellectual success is measured by 
the degree to which it is cultivated. The senses grow 
keen by constant use, there is no other way of training 
them. And the mind grows sensitive to truth by work- 
ing on it. 



224 THE ART OF STUDY 



CHAPTER XXI. 

SOME FURTHER CONDITIONS OF SOUND REASONING. 

No effort has been spared to make the fact impressive 
that mere reasoning does not make one an intellectual 
success. Some very important conditions have to be con- 
sidered, on which the quality of one's reasoning depends. 

Nature and life are so constituted that there is cer- 
tainty nowhere. We are obliged to act confidently upon 
probability. He who keeps himself in a state of doubt 
till he knows all the facts, whether in school or in busi- 
ness, will never do anything but sit and wait and be mis- 
erable. It is absolutely necessary to act upon partial 
knowledge, so there is always risk connected with every 
decision. But that is what constitutes the spice of life. 
We must place confidence in the law of our mind which 
says that what has been true once will be true again 
under similar circumstances. But we can never be sure 
that the circumstances are exactly similar. 

Therefore as long as the human mind continues to 
grow in power, and its knowledge continues to grow in 
perfection, there must constantly be readjustment. The 
mind not only has to work over and organize its knowledge 
into consistent beliefs and opinions, but must constantly 



FURTHER CONDITIONS OF SOUND REASONING 22o 

reorganize it. Knowledge that seemed perfect and com- 
plete yesterday, will seem utterly inadequate and poor to- 
morrow. But this is no mark of human weakness. It 
is a sign of growing strength, of new and better knowl- 
edge. It is only a proof of Bagehot^s profound remark 
that "the price of improvement is that the unimproved 
shall always look degraded." 

Progress toward truth is very slow. It is an easy 
matter to draw inferences, but the law of our thought, 
that what is true of one thing is true of every other that 
is like it, is dangerous, because we are so far away from 
the facts. We have to reason so much about things we 
cannot actually see or investigate, that the more sweep- 
ing our inferences are the more likely they are to be 
jwrong. There may somewhere be a break of continuity 
among the facts of which we are not and cannot be aware. 

A little study of logic is likely to make one feel that 
he can reason his way straight from common ignorance 
to the profoundest truth. 

"Xow, Huxley from one bone could make 
An unknown beast; so if I take 
This spout of water, and from thence 
Construct a whale by inference, 
A whale, I venture to assert, 
Must be an animated squirt ! 
Thus, children, we the truth may sift 
By use of logic's priceless gift." 



226 THE ART OF STUDY 

I This ridiculous view of logic is not so serious an ex- 
aggeration of the facts as it may seem. We expect logic 
to do things for which it was never intended. It is like 
a fanning mill ; what was not put in the hopper will not 
come out of the mill, no matter how hard the fans are 
made to blow. 

I once taught geography to a young boy who did not 
care for geography or any other study. He was no fool; 
so at last, in my despair, I told him, as a test of his think- 
ing power, that I would give him five minutes to tell me 
where all the large cities of Ireland were. He came back 
before his time was up and not only told me they were 
all on the coast, but told me the reason why. They 
formed the working joints of commerce between Ireland 
and the rest of the world. He felt like a master then. 
I gave him the United States to study, and he explained 
the locations of the big coast cities. With the help of 
a gentle hint he was able to point out the head of navi- 
gation on many of the principal rivers. But the problem 
of American cities after a while became so complex that 
he almost lost sight of his original "great truth'^ and had 
to invent a variety of explanations. The farther he went 
the more apparent it became to him that simple reason- 
ing from his first discovered truth would not carry him 
through his task. A wide knowledge of geographical and 
commercial conditions was necessary to an understanding 
of the location of many American cities. Sagacity, the 
mental quality which distinguishes the wise man from 



FURTHER CONDITIONS OF SOUND REASONING 227 

both the fool and the logical machine, is a prime requisite 
in reaching truth. 

I have tried before to show that merely telling a 
thing does not make it a permanent piece of knowledge 
for the hearer. It is then nearly always forgotten. It 
must be experienced. One may tell a child a hundred 
times that a hot stove will hurt. It knows the fact, but 
the fact is unimpressive. It must touch the stove; then 
the fact is burned into its mind as well as onto its hand. 
Thenceforth the child can reason very accurately. "Hot 
stoves burn; this stove is hot; therefore it will burn," is 
unassailable logic. Animal safety depends on the power 
to avoid repeated accidents. 

We give no special credit for ability to reason in 
this way. The power is common to men and animals, and 
it saves much misery. But the moment the facts become 
a little different, or slightly complicated, most men be- 
come absolutely helpless. If we could always tread on 
the ground of absolute certainty there would be no dis- 
tinction between the wise man and the fool. But since 
we cannot, caution and discrimination in forming conclu- 
sions distinguish the former from the latter. The lan- 
guage is full of names, ill-defined but familiar, for the 
mental characteristic that distinguishes the two kinds of 
men. Judgment, sagacity, common sense, wisdom, ex- 
press from different points of view and in different degrees 
the fact that so-called reasoning alone is about as likely 
to lead into error as into the truth, to accident as to 
safety. 



228 THE ART OF STUDY 

All normal men and women know that a blazing lamp 
will set a house on fire. They reason quickly and cor- 
rectly. But the vast majority of them who try to carry 
exploded, blazing lamps outdoors burn themselves badly 
and often burn themselves to death. The infinite pity 
of it all is that sagacity often plays no part at all on the 
stage of life with heroism and sacrifice for others. If, 
instead of running with the blazing lamps in front of 
them, the flames fairly licking oif their clothing, they 
merely turned around and backed out, so that the blaze 
and heat would move away from them, they could accom- 
plish all that their splendid courage inspires them to do, 
without suffering such fearful fatal consequences to them- 
selves. 

Faraday, the great physicist, said that the greatest 
weakness in scientific men is deficiency of judgment. He 
meant this to apply in matters in which those men should 
be expert. In the long run the difference between theory 
and practice, failure and success, unsound and sound rea- 
soning, folly and wisdom, is due to the presence of good 
judgment, sagacity, in selecting the right facts to reason 
upon. Every step of a logical process may be absolutely 
correct and the conclusion be utterly false, because only 
part of the facts, or only the least important, have been 
used in making the inferences. Good judgment is the 
ability to weigh all the facts, give each its proper influ- 
ence and draw right conclusions. What is true in this 
respect of scientific reasoning is true in the reasoning of 
common life. 



FURTHER CONDITIONS OF SOUND REASONING 229 

One may understand a general principle perfectly, 
and even be familiar with many of its applications in 
science and practical life. But that is no guarantee that 
in a new or hitherto unthought-of combination of cir- 
cumstances the application of the principle will be real- 
ized. A student of physics may work for weeks on the 
theory of the expansion of gases, prove the truth over 
and over that gases expand on the application of heat. 
But it is not at all unlikely that he will ride home from 
his experiments and lean his bicycle against the house in 
the sunniest and hottest corner. When he comes out 
again he finds a tire exploded. 

He can quickly reach the correct conclusion about 
the cause; for he has a great advantage over others. 
His training in physics, while it played him false in the 
matter of foresight, has developed a quick and accurate 
hindsight or power of explanation. Air in the tire and 
heat in the corner: gas, heat, expansion, explosion. 
Scholarly theory and practical fact seem so far apart and 
yet so near. Foresight, sagacity, judgment, common 
sense, are apparently set at naught by such an act. A 
young physicist ought to know better. But he is not 
very different from the most of us. His training makes 
the new experience much more valuable to him than it 
would be to others. If his mind is something more than 
a dumping ground for facts, the experience startles him 
into mental activity on the subject in an entirely new 
field — the practical side. 



230 THE ART OF STUDY 

In a general way it may be said that human thinking 
is defective chiefly from the failure to consider all the 
facts that apply to the case in hand. Most of onr opin- 
ions of men in both their public and private relations, 
most of our conclusions in the fields of scholarship and 
practical life are faulty because, through ignorance or 
prejudice or indolence or carelessness we fail to take into 
account all the facts that ought to be considered. This 
curse rests heavily, not only on the masses of men, but 
upon well-trained men as well. 

The neglect of a single condition may produce utter 
failure, even though all other things are carefully at- 
tended to. I once saw a boy undertake to noose a lizard 
with a noose made of a spear of grass. It was apparent 
enough by the way he went about it that he had often 
caught lizards before. The lizard only blinked and 
waited ; the noose was properly made, and went easily over 
its head, and the loop closed around its neck. But the 
animal darted away almost without a struggle. The boy 
had used a spear of grass that was just a little too dry, 
in bending, it broke a little too completely at one place 
and held together only by the outer skin. When the 
lizard jumped it snapped. Failure is so characteristic 
of human activity because the neglect of an apparently 
unimportant little factor can mar the whole result of 
long and cautious effort. 

Even when our judgments do not lead to utter fail- 
ure, they may be so burdened with error as to be prac- 



FURTHER CONDITIONS OF SOUND REASONING 231 

tically valueless for future use. There was a time when 
it was thought that pacing off distances was accurate 
enough a mode of measurement to use in determining 
latitude. Now the most accurate instruments, thor- 
oughly trained observers, carefully chosen places for obser- 
vation and measurement, and endless repetition of the 
observations are all brought to bear upon the subject, 
in order to eliminate, as far as possible, every source of 
error in the determination of latitude. What may seem 
to be fairly well-done and satisfactory to-day is worthless 
to-morrow. Eesults of every kind can be made perma- 
nently satisfactory only by the most careful elimination 
of all possible sources of error. 

But the elimination of error from our thinking is no 
easy matter. It is not only by using more accurate in- 
struments but by the development of infinite patience in 
the individual character that it becomes possible to hunt 
down the minor and hidden errors that vitiate human 
thought. 

First we make mistakes on a large scale because we do 
not recognize the likenesses between things that look radi- 
cally different. We fail to get hold of the real greatness 
of a truth because we fail to perceive the likenesses be- 
tween the two extremes of a series of similar things. We 
do not see, we have to be taught that the burning of a 
straw-heap and the rusting of a plow-share are the same 
process of oxidation and that the vast apparent differ- 
ence is due to the fact that the one is slower than the 



232 THE ART OF STUDY 

other. The power to penetrate below the difference-? 
and recognize the likenesses is given only to him who is 
willing to serve a long apprenticeship in the search for 
truth. 

At the other extreme is the constant danger of error 
due to neglect of minor differences. Charles Darwin 
wanted to find out once which of two sets of plants on 
which he was experimenting produced the more seed. Or- 
dinarily it would seem sufficient to examine a few cases, 
because anything but a slight difference would be easily 
discovered. But he was dealing with small differences, 
and it was very important that there should be no mis- 
take. So he deliberately counted twenty thousand seeds 
under a microscope before he regarded the question as 
settled. He spent a life-time doing work that way; and 
the reason why his work has lasted so well is because he 
pursued every little question until, l)y his merciless ex- 
haustivoness, he had fairly proved the view that he finally 
held. 

The ability to see facts clearly and to appreciate dif- 
ferences commonly neglected comes only from long prac- 
tice in looking for them. In the course of time a keen- 
ness of mental vision, a sharpness of observation, is devel- 
oped which would astonish the student who is only begin- 
ning his training. 

The openings to any new line of thought are likely 
to be small. What many people never see at all, are 
pounced upon as indications by more observing men; 



FURTHER CONDITIONS OF SOUND REASONING 233 

and tliese little whispering suggestions ma}^ lead the mind 
into a great new field of thought. Any untrained mind 
can remember, perforce, that in a certain year there was 
a heavy rainfall in California. The facts were great and 
striking. Wind and falling sheets of water were spectacu- 
lar. The softened ground let go the roots and trees both 
big and little leaned over as in weariness. Even a stupid, 
garrulous crone can repeat the story in the years to come. 
But that rain has left a record that stupidity never reads. 
It not only left its record on the account books of the 
people, but wrote the story secretly around the heart of 
every tree that was growing that year. 

The tongue of the untrained man is fed only by his 
memory. But one who has been trained to read signifi- 
cance into things that others do not see at all, could read 
the fine writing of nature in the trunks of all the trees. 
The broad, thick band of wood that grew that year is the 
record written round the heart of every tree that was 
alive in the forests at that time. One who saw the big 
rain would easily associate the rings of wood in the trunks 
of the Monterey pines with the rain that caused them. 
But even one who did not see it could surely infer the 
cause of the big rings that were formed in all the trees 
during the same year. And the succeeding rings would 
tell tales of lean and thirsty years. His thought once 
started might develop into an investigation that would 
lead him to the reports of the weather bureau and the 
account books of the hardware men who installed hun- 



234 THE ART OF STUDY 

dreds of pumping plants in the orchards to offset the 
lack of rain. 

With all of us, in all we undertake to do, the chances 
of error are enormous, and the training that results in 
real intellectual power must create in the mind a habit 
of looking for more facts and a certainty that every fact 
has a tale to tell. A man who depends on his intuitive 
ability to get at the truth at once, is untrustworthy both 
in scholarship and in business. To be sure, a business 
man of long experience gives important decisions in the 
morning concerning the business of the day, and it seems 
as if those decisions had been made after only slight con- 
sideration. But the outsider who observes this apparent 
spontaneity of judgment does not know how long and 
carefully those questions were weighed secretly during the 
day and night before. He does not know how to estimate 
the powerful effect of that business man's past experience 
on his present judgment. The man himself may not be 
aware of what it is that gives him the necessary sagacity 
to deal with a particular case. But the great substratum 
of experience mostly forgotten and buried beneath his 
present consciousness, furnishes the indefinable but solid 
basis of common sense which makes him see things 
promptly in their true light. 

Neither do scientific men turn out great ideas spon- 
taneously. They labor silently over their views and look 
for their own mistakes, and at last present to ihe world 
only the results that have been wrought over and over, 



FURTHER CONDITIONS OF SOUND REASONING 235 

carefully and painfully, in secret. The public knows in 
a general way how even the best established scientific 
views undergo change as knowledge improves. But it 
would marvel, indeed, if it knew how many tentative 
views, how much of speculative thought, what multitudes 
of fancies that they had supposed were facts, scientific 
men quietly cast aside as their minds slowly work their 
way toward the truth. 

The same thing is true in all things relating to the 
higher and finer judgments of men. There is no intuitive 
road to the truth. Good judgment lies at the far end 
of a long and up-hill road. But the well-trained mind 
comes after awhile to feel the right and the wrong at each 
step. There is an indefinable intellectual sense developed 
which brings sound judgment with it. Sagacity grows 
only slowly and silently in the carefully cultivated soil of 
experience. It does not come ^^y first intention.'^ 

It is by expecting that something will happen that 
the robin constantly saves its life. The same kind of habit 
of expectant attention is developed in the right-thinking 
mind. The life in which expectation plays no part is of 
no value to itself or to any one else. As the habit of 
anticipation grows, the mind learns not only to expect 
that something is coming, but to foresee more or less 
accurately what it will be. Experience develops the power 
to interpret little indications aright, whether the matter 
under consideration is a Latin translation or a weather 
prediction. 



2So THE ART OF STUDY 

Most students who work hard have at some tnne 
struggled persisterxtly with a subject that constantly 
baffled them. And perhaps when failure seemed most 
certain, an understanding of the subject has come as if 
by inspiration. A new insight into what was poorly im- 
derstood seems to be the result of happy accident. But 
such happy accidents occur only to those who are prepared 
for them. The great inventions that startle the com- 
mercial world, the great scientific discoveries that revolu- 
tionize human thought, and the little mental triumphs of 
the student in his daily studies are all the result of long 
previous labor and patient searching. Though the final 
success, the final insight, seems so sudden and startling, 
so disconnected from what has gone before, it is after 
all, "the vexing, forward-reaching sense" coupled with 
sagacity that leads as if by intuition straight to the de- 
sired result. 



REFLECTION 237 



CHAPTEK XXII. 

REFLECTIOX. 

Winning a battle is not all a general has to do. Un- 
less he promptly and carefully reaps the fruits of his 
victory he had better never have fought at all. Unless 
the student takes the time to reap the fruits of his sys- 
tematic efforts by careful reflection on what he has done, 
his labor is largely wasted. Old Confucius came into the 
world late enough to be able to observe that "Learning 
without thought is time lost.^^ 

Telling students to muse upon their work^ to think,, 
seems much like telling men to be good. They have 
been told this since the beginning of the world but they^ 
are still prone to do evil as the sparks fly upward. Suc- 
cess that comes of effort instead of luck in any depart- 
ment of life depends on hard and steady thinking. Mere- 
ly trying to understand or repeat the thinking that is 
done by others does not bring success either to a grocery 
clerk or a philosopher. 

In dealing with any subject, either as students or as 
practical people of the world, the most of us are inclined 
to let go before the subject is "worked out." Interest 
in other things draws away the mind from its regular 



238 THE ART OF STUDY 

duties before they are thoroughly done. The clerk who 
has his hat on and his hand on the door-knob when the 
clock strikes six has taken his mind completely off his 
duties; he need not look for promotion. He is no 
thinker. 

If on the other hand the mind remains fixed on a 
topic so that results can be worked out, it still labors 
under humanity^s handicap — an irritable desire to act 
directly. We cannot brook delay or postpone results long 
enough to give careful reflection to what we are doing. 
No thread of thought is spun, no garment of reflection 
is woven. Is it any wonder that our knowledge is so im- 
perfect and unreliable and our notions are so far away 
from the truth? The robin might as well expect living 
nestlings without brooding on its eggs as for a human 
being to expect profit from storing up facts without 
brooding over them. 

Facts without afterthought have no common pur- 
pose ; they only get in each other's way. When once they 
are brought by reflection to point toward a common truth, 
their combined force is not merely the force of one fact 
multiplied by their number. The courage of a single 
wolf is a very doubtful quantity; one may have mixed 
feelings concerning it, and quite likely contempt for a 
single wolf will not be absent in the mixture. The same 
is true of a single fact. It may slip in and out of con- 
sciousness on wolfish, padded feet, but it commands no 
respect, gives no inspiration. 



REFLECTION 239 

But seven wolves leave no doubt upon the mind. 
Their courage is no longer the courage of a single wolf 
multiplied by seven. It is the courage of the pach that 
makes it dangerous and makes men wish that there were 
fire between it and them. The mysterious new power of 
organization and mutual support has entered as a new and 
most important factor. Each wolf makes a different 
kind of wolf out of each of the other six. Every snarl 
and yelp gives hotter, quicker breath to all the pack, till 
the victim is brought to bay in terror. The facts that 
constitute our learning likewise draw all their interest 
and importance from being carefully thought over and 
brought into close relation with their fellows. They give 
each other mutual support. Each becomes a proof of the 
truth of the others. 

It is the constant learning of more and more facts 
without thinking about them that produces the hopeless 
confusion revealed in examination papers and which is so 
constantly and despairingly discussed and so often made 
the butt of ridicule. 

A class in English literature was given a series of 
selections from the Old Testament to study for their 
historical and literary value. No religious requirements 
were connected with the reading. The purpose was to 
familiarize the class with those great Old Testament 
characters and passages that have permeated all litera- 
ture with allusions, and without a direct knowledge of 
which every reader of modern literature and every stu- 



240 THE ART OF STUDY 

dent of mediaeval and modern art is at a constant and 
serious loss. 

In the examination, one of the young men, in answer 
to a question concerning the historical position and char- 
acter of Moses, said, "Moses was born in a manger, and 
found and brought up by the daughter of a shepherd; he 
was born in Israel and lived there till a young man."' 

This fearful and hopeless confusion of facts would be 
more laughable and less pitiful if such intellectual per- 
formances were not so desperately common. They are 
not oddities, but fairly represent a large part of the mis- 
cellaneous knowledge that is ordinarily accumulated even 
under the guidance of teachers. But the student is the 
culpable party. His curse is lack of thought on what 
he is doing at the time he does it, and reflection after the 
work is completed. That is what leads to all the mental 
confusion that crops up afterwards when the facts get 
hopelessly mixed. And it is not likely that they will 
ever be brought back into their original connections again. 
After the first impression is made each fact is allowed to 
shift for itself without further attention. Too much of 
the student's work is left in the stage of "first opinion'' — 
crude, unconsidered and defective. 

The student's natural excuse is that the tendency 
of the times so burdens him with quantity of work that 
it is with him a sheer question of getting over the ground, 
let alone cultivating it carefully by the reflective process. 
But a little afterthought goes a long way. In the long 



REFLECTION 241 

run the surest way to master large quantities of work is 
to give careful thought to every step. Thought and after- 
thought become a habit by and by, and the time so often 
lost because of a poor understanding of a subject is all 
saved when once the habit of reflection is established. 
To be specific, ten minutes of reflection will save half an 
hour of digging before the day is over. 

It is nearly true that reading, and repetition of what 
others have said — so-called study — on the one hand, and 
real thinking on the other hand are in inverse ratio. A 
really productive thinker may do much reading; but he 
makes his reading incidental to his thinking. When 
such a man reads he reaches out after the crucial facts. 
He is after the kind of information that will help settle 
something one way or the other. Lincoln, Bunyan, the 
antique Edmund Eich, were all men of small reading, as 
we speak of reading now; but what they read, they used 
to feed the furnaces of their thought. 

I do not wish even to seem to belittle the value of 
reading. Breadth of thought and culture, soundness of 
reasoning, require a wide range of knowledge. It is a 
fact, however, that the vast and growing literature of the 
present is affecting the quality of our wit. We learn to 
read with no intention of giving the matter a second 
thought. A large supply of facts, a wide range of ac- 
curate knowledge is indispensable to sound thinking. 
But much reading is fatal to the development of the 
higher intellectual powers unless these retain the mas- 



242 THE ART OF STUDY 

tery over all the material that is brought before the mind. 
Truth reveals itself only slowly, and our desire to act di- 
rectly, to have a conclusion promptly, makes most of us 
followers of those who are willing to wait and think. It 
is important to know the truth at the beginning of life; 
but wisdom comes only at the end. It is only when the 
facts are all summed up and carefully thought over that 
the truth reveals itself. 

The leaves of the trees unfold and fill the earth with 
green ; they grow brilliant when bitten by the frost ; they 
fall and are forgotten and are followed by others just as 
good. But the permanent part of the tree is of slower 
growth, silent and imperceptible. The daily tasks pursue 
one another through the seasons, and each seems like the 
other. But the power of thought grows large and abides. 
It upholds the fabric of knowledge because it built each 
item and gave it vitality. Final success, explanation, 
penetration, insight, may seem sudden and startling, but 
it is only the late fruit of steady and accurate thinking 
carried on silently through the years. 



THE IMPULSIVE AND VASCILLATING WILLS 243 



CHAPTEE XXIII. 

THE IMPULSIVE AND THE VASCILLATING WILL. 

The writer may as well make a confession here that 
is not made in the preface. This book is written to the 
willing student. And by willingness I mean not merely 
the willingness of inclination but of active force. What 
will be said in this chapter, therefore, will have chiefly 
a negative value for him. It will deal largely with states 
of mind that had better be avoided. The following chap- 
ter will discuss what seems to me to be the desirable 
qualities of the will. ' 

The drunkard drinks and the boy plays because im- 
pulse is the master. Present gratification is the only 
motive that rules the conduct. There is no regard for 
consequences, no consideration, no serious thought about 
the bearing of the present act upon the near or distant 
future. In such a character there is no reflection be- 
tween the first thought and the action; no influence of 
remote interests or the interests of others upon the pres- 
ent conduct. Such a life of impulse is a stream over 
which the judgment exercises no apparent control. 

A typically impulsive will acts in entire absence of 
reflection. It is swayed at every step by a single thought. 



244 THE ART OF STUDY 

No deliberate judgment is first passed upon all the pos- 
sible motives for action or the absence of it. Each new 
circumstance sways the mind completely and excites to 
action. The senses and passions fix upon whatever is at 
hand, and gratification, immediate and complete, is the 
only matter that enters as a motive. Every act, however, 
is followed by a complicated network of consequences. 
But the life of impulse leaves these out of consideration 
at every step, and is always unprepared for what is com- 
ing. Responsibility is set at naught. Such a life is one 
of careless drifting with the stream of interest or of 
cruel buffeting against the consequences of unconsidered 
acts. As soon as the immediate interest has been ex- 
hausted the life has to hunt for a new hold upon the 
world. A new start has to be made. The chief difficulty 
here is the lack of permanent motives to action or re- 
straint. There being no such guide, the will is free to 
act without the friction of deliberate reflection, and the 
course of conduct as well as the course of thought is likely 
to be a series of errors. 

There is a curious, but not uncommon, effect pro- 
duced in the class-room by what has been aptly called 
the explosive will. From among my experiences there 
stands out the case of a student of French. He had 
studied carefully the principles of the grammar; but 
when it came to the reading of French, he made a bad 
failure of it, because there was in his character a com- 
bination of low reflective power with great explosiveness. 



THE IMPULSIVE AND VASCILLATING WILLS 245 

There was inability to gather up all the data necessary 
for making a right decision, inability to wait until delib- 
eration had done its work. The translation of every sen- 
tence that he touched was a succession of errors, because 
he could not "keep cool" till he had considered all the 
facts. In one effort he might give careful attention to 
the tense of the verb and answer before attending to its 
number. In the next effort on the same sentence he 
might reverse the process. Only by constant criticism 
and check upon his explosiveness could he be finally in- 
duced to correlate his facts and squeeze the truth out of 
them. 

His case was unique, however, because this trait was 
so pronounced in him. The type of mind, in a less ex- 
treme form, is quite common. At bottom, this explo- 
siveness seems to be due to the fact that out of the cloud 
of facts that ought to be considered, one stands forth 
so clearly from the general haziness that it wields an 
almost unhindered intiuence upon the mind; and imme- 
diate action follows. The student of French referred to 
always did most of his thinking after he had spoken. 
As soon as he understood a single point in a sentence, 
he seemed to be under the dire necessity of giving ex- 
pression to his knowledge, regardless of the other points 
that were entitled to equal consideration. 

Great explosions come from the sudden release of 
tremendous force that may have been long in gathering. 
The action of the will may be very sudden and violent 



246 THE ART OF STUDY 

after long, undue repression; But that is entirely differ- 
ent from the everlasting pop-pop-popping of the explo- 
sive will that goes off on the slightest provocation and 
leads to action that is not preceded by deliberation. 

The other extreme is seen in individuals who habitu- 
ally give long and careful consideration to any proposed 
line of action. One who acts without deliberation, but on 
the inspiration of each momentary impulse, is likely to 
be an "active" individual, busy all the time; but his ac- 
tivity is not industry because it has no ultimate ends in 
view. In the type now to be discussed the will is con- 
stantly checked by the spirit of deliberation. Professor 
James has given a fine description of the two types of 
mind in his Principles of Psychology; and he shows that 
the latter type does not necessarily imply an ineffective 
life. It habitually gives consideration to all the factors 
that can possibly enter into the question at issue; the 
thinking is clear, the decision is definite; the reasons for 
the judgment are sound. In such a type the decision so 
frequently is that it is not worth while to act, that it 
leaves the impression that the life is a negative, ineffect- 
ive one. Whereas the explosive individual is constantly 
busy carrying his various impulses into effect, the delib- 
erative individual seems incapable of effective action. 

But this is not so. Such a character may appear 
defective in will power, while it may really be symmetri- 
cal. Its life is likely to be steady and quiet. It may 
commit errors of judgment. Its reasons for not acting 



THE IMPULSIVE AND VASCILLATING WILLS 247 

may not always appeal to the sound judgment of others, 
but they are easily understood. Inaction is not due to 
confusion of thought or inability to reach a decision. 
One thus gifted may act only rarely; but when he does 
act, he is likely to act with great force, because his mind 
is made up. Not uncommonly this apparent sluggish- 
ness of the will is coupled with great stubbornness of 
purpose when action is once taken. 

Every thoughtful individual can draw from his own 
experience illustrations of errors of judgment. Some 
time after an apparently important thing has been done it 
becomes plain that it was not nearly so important as it 
looked. Acts that were omitted because their reasons 
appeared unimportant, sometimes look very different at 
the end of a day or a week. They assume an impor- 
tance that is wholly unlooked for. Things that promised 
satisfaction turn into ashes when touched; and things 
that we dreaded to approach and worried much about 
seem to lose all their significance after a little. Time, 
"the great independent variable," gives a lengthening 
perspective to the details of our lives which robs them of 
the original value that we assigned to them. Some that 
we treated as insignificant become large with importance, 
and others, to which we assigned vast significance, dwindle 
into paltry details. 

The impulsive type of mind is likely to be forever 
fallino^ into this kind of error of judgment. Acting al- 
ways on simple, momentary motives, it gets no mental 



248 THE ART OF STUDY 

perspective by means of which to judge rightly of a given 
course of thought or action. The deliberate type is 
likely to see things in their true light. The deliberative 
individual may lose many of the legitimate passing pleas- 
ures of life, but he is not likely to lose the solid attain- 
ments which one with the explosive nature never can se- 
cure. 

There is, however, a much worse condition than either 
of those described above, one especially fatal to the best 
interests of the student. He is bound by the nature of 
his calling to be an accurate and systematic thinker. But 
thought, to be of any value, must furnish elective mo- 
tives for action. The thought itself will be untrue to 
reality unless kept running in a well-marked channel that 
opens out into action. The state of mind in which a 
consistent train of reasoning is carried through but does 
not result in any kind of action, can even make a fool 
out of a genius. Motives, if felt, are not strong enough 
to produce action. 

I am not speaking now of the contemplative mind, 
which stands, as it were, by the roadside of life and makes 
notes upon experience, which purposely remains in the at- 
titude of observer and commentator of the action of 
others. I refer to the state of mind in which the desira- 
bility of a course of action is recognized and acknowledged 
but there is not enough desire or will power to carry the 
thought into effect. Most human beings love action of 
some kind, and give some sort of exercise to their vital 



THE IMPULSIVE AND VASCILLATING WILLS 249 

powers. It is in the presence of difficulties that thought 
becomes more and more widely separated from action. 
The lack of moral force to carry the clearly conceived 
notion through into reality over obstacles tends constant- 
ly to weaken the relation between the individual's 
thoughts and his acts. There is no difficulty in thinking 
out a plan or a line of reasoning; and the stress of life 
is avoided by stopping short of action. Under such con- 
ditions such action as there is, results from the pressure 
of circumstances, while the thought becomes more and 
more disconnected from reality. 

Even the scientific man, who is supposed to deal ex- 
clusively with hard, cold facts must have a powerful im- 
agination to light the way for his slow and dogged think- 
ing. But he always brings imagination to heel and makes 
it the servant of real investigation. It is chained to facts 
and must carry them along. Its flight is constantly 
checked and changed and hampered by tests. 

When a habit of day-dreaming and shirking reality is 
once cultivated, is deliberately invited to govern the men- 
tal life, will power is likely to be at its lowest ebb. The 
most beautiful and consistent day-dreams flourish best in 
the absence of the healthy, robust action of the will. 
Speculation in science and philosophy is the easiest and 
wildest where the facts are fewest and most obscure, and 
experiment does not enter to disturb the course of 
thought. Theory is most complete and perfect where 
there is no chance or mood for practice. 



250 THE ART OF STUDY 

To make the character flaccid and ineffective it is not 
necessary that the mind should dwell largely upon no- 
tions that cannot be put into execution. There is a con- 
stant temptation to let thought have its free course and 
to stop just short of action, even when we are thinking 
upon wholesome, nearby things that can be carried into 
effect. The difficulty seems to be in that first exercise of 
the will that leads to action. Legions of men and women 
keep their minds actively at work upon the possibilities 
of life, but do not take the first step required for their 
realization. This state of mind, once chronic, makes ac- 
tion pale and sickly. This flabby quality of thought that 
lacks the bony stiffening of the will is more common, espe- 
cially among students, than most of us would be willing 
to admit. In the end the individual seems to lose all 
ability to crystallize his thought or even his desire into 
action. Circumstances may eoerce him to act, but that 
is shabby training for the will. 

There is one doubtful improvement on this state of 
things. There are multitudes who conceive clearly and 
reflect fairly well, and who spend much moral energy firm- 
ly resolving to accomplish certain results. Eesolutions re- 
late largely to action at a definite time in the future. 
They are mostly a concession to the righteousness of the 
thought and a provision for postponing the action. A 
resolution is only the shadow of the will; and shadows 
are mostly worthless. 

Alongside this poor apology for will power belongs 



THE IMPULSIVE AND VASCILLATING WILLS 251 

the vascillating whiffle-tree will, that alternately begins 
and abandons action. It finds no secure backing in 
careful judgment. If for any reason action of any kind 
is begun, the reason soon appears a poor one; other rea- 
sons arise for doing otherwise. Decisions are readily 
reached and action may be prompt, but no sooner has per- 
formance begun than confusion arises; new considera- 
tions come up and produce hesitation that ends in a halt. 
Then comes further deliberation, and another start, that, 
loses its force before the friction is overcome. The will 
keeps whipping back and forth like a tree-top in the wind. 
Chronic uncertainty finally pervades the whole life. Such 
an individual is in practical life marked by the community 
as one to be avoided when anything is to be accomplished. 
Not only is he no helper of others; he is a check on all 
straight-forward action. 



252 THE ART OF STUDY 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

THE AGONY OF STARTING. 

The reason so many good ideas are never carried into 
practical effect is that there is a period of agony that 
intervenes between the thought and effective action. Th* 
beginning of any action is more difficult than its continu- 
ance. Even a horse knows that. It costs blood to start 
a load that is easily pulled after it is moving. But there 
is comfort in the thought that the law has no exceptions. 
Every force acts more slowly at first. Gravitation does 
not agonize over the fact that at the first instant, a stone's 
movement is very slow ; nor does it draw courage from the 
sure knowledge that the stone will move faster after a 
while. The force of gravity simply makes the steady pull, 
and the speed of motion increases inevitably. The same 
is true of the efforts of horses and men; only they feel 
bound to agonize more or less over the start. 

I believe that in the experience of nearly all minds 
there is more or less of this difficulty, inertia, resistance 
to action even after the thought is clear and the resolu- 
tion to act has been made. I believe, too, that every man 
and woman who hopes for a successful life must come to 
recognize clearly and frankly this difficulty of making the 



THE AGONY OF STARTING 253 

start. No one who, having recognized it, is unwilling to 
serve his apprenticeship through this preliminary period 
will ever carry into execution his most worthy thought and 
desire. Whether the question is one merely of studying 
a lesson or writing a paper or making a dissection in the 
laboratory, or of pursuing a whole course of study, the 
success of the actual execution depends absolutely on the 
quality of the action of the reason and the will during 
this preliminary struggle, no matter whether it is short or 
long. 

The unhappy period of getting under way is the home 
of lost souls. There lie bleaching the bones of all the 
hopes and desires, and all the puny and half-developed 
efforts of humanity. One learns to cross this unprom- 
ising valley of preliminary effort; but a thousand never 
see the farther heights of success. They try a little 
and fail; henceforth they are pushed hither and thither 
by the harsh hand of circumstance. 

There is no road around this valley. There must 
sooner or later be developed a sublime faith, that the ap- 
parently weak and fruitless first efforts are only a nec- 
essary prelude to what will surely be strong and steady 
action with big results. But this easy faith that ultimate 
success comes through preliminary effort and distress is 
the growth of time and practice. 

One of the chief difficulties in the mind's way may 
be dealt with a little in detail. When we peer into the 
future, time is fore-shortened. All the parts of a future 



254 THE ART OF STUDY 

experience, as we gaze upon it expectantly from the 
present, seem bunched together. Dreams of pleasure 
and profit usually leave out of consideration the long 
labors preliminary to their achievement, so the joy seems 
all undiluted. So, too, all sorts of difficulties, however 
well they may be understood, seem crowded close to- 
gether. In our thought they are not diluted, spread far 
apart by time. 

One of the essential conditions of success, either in 
study or in business or in social life is that the mind 
shall have a clear grasp of the difficulties to be met, 
a clear view of what is coming. The plans that are laid 
must include provision not only for all known difficul- 
ties, but for unforeseen emergencies. It is never safe 
to belittle a task when preparations are made for its 
execution. But after the task has been considered, when 
its nature is understood, and its diffieulties fully realized 
and planned for, then the will needs to be focussed on 
the initial step alone. A large proportion of human 
failure is due to the fact that all the obstacles loom up 
immediately in front of the mind's eye. The lengthening 
course of time and its effect are not sufficiently thought 
about. It is because the moral courage is called upon 
to face and, as it were, to act against all the obstacles 
at once, and that, too, at the beginning, that makes tasks 
of every kind so much dreaded. Obstacles are the great 
sifters of men. Only those with faith that the first blow 
counts, though it may show no results, are willing to 



THE AGONY OF STARTING 255 

give the blow and follow it with another. They know 
that all things must yield, if they are struck often and 
hard enough. 

The absence of results after the first efforts dampens 
first enthusiasm and then hope and interest. When these 
are smothered, action ceases. There is never effort with- 
out faith. But even the worst failure in an effort to 
perform a student's task is a valuable experience. It 
helps to clear the ground. Failures reveal the false no- 
tions with which the mind started. Every failure, if 
correctly valued, brings the mind nearer to success. Only 
children and inexperienced enthusiasts expect first 
thought to ripen into successful action. The relation 
between thought and reality, theory and practice, is not 
so close as that. 

It is important to remember in this connection that 
difficulties dissolve in the doing. No matter how weak 
a student's first results may be, no matter how faint the 
first gleam of his understanding of his task, that little 
is the most powerful weapon that has yet been forged 
for further struggle. Comprehension now has something 
to take hold upon. The mind can grasp the little that 
it has, and use it in looking for more. The power of 
performance is cumulative. The mind of the student 
may not be sensibly stronger at the end of a half hour 
of struggle, but its capacity for effective thinking is 
vastly greater, because with every effort put forth some- 
thing new is gained that lends help in understanding 



256 THE ART OF STUDY 

everything that is touched afterwards. The hands may 
be the same, but the tools are better. 

It is at the beginning of each task, and at the begin- 
ning of the student's career, that this principle of cumu- 
lative power needs to be realized. The amount of time 
spent in preliminary doubt, half-heartedness and misery 
over lack of good progress will depend largely on faith. 
The time will be short or long, minutes or hours, accord- 
ing as one is or is not confident that the difficulty is only 
the friction of getting started. 

The general perversity of things often serves to check 
an individual's action by disappointing him. Nothing 
seems to turn out as expected. Hope and expectation 
seem blasted at the outset. But while we cannot too 
greatly emphasize the importance of trying to foresee a 
result, it is well to remember that realization is usually 
widely different from expectation and usually falls far 
short. The effect of constantly disappointing expecta- 
tion depends on the attitude of the mind. 

The real attitude of the scientific man toward 
what is yet unknown is based upon an unquenchable de- 
sire to know the reality that is hidden behind the myste- 
rious curtain. Desire for truth is the distinguishing 
mark of the true philosopher, no matter whether it ful- 
fills his expectations or smashes them to atoms. Disap- 
pointment in his expectations does not check his efforts, 
because he is not merely seeking to fulfill those expecta- 
tions and gratify his hopes. He is trying to find the 
truth. 



THE AGONY OF STARTING 257 

If after he makes his first efforts he finds his expec- 
tations flatly contradicted by the results, the failure only 
serves to correct his judgment, and brings him nearer 
the truth. In short, the scientific man must be open- 
minded, in a state of expectant attention, confident that 
something is to be learned, with willingness and a dogged 
determination to find it out, and with the love of truth 
so strong in him that, no matter what the results may 
prove to be, he will accept them frankly as the real ob- 
ject for which he was looking. 

If a general's happiness and hope of fame depended 
on his carrying out in every detail the plan of a cam- 
paign that he had mapped out in advance, his chance of 
disappointment would be great indeed. His will is ob- 
structed at every turn by a perverse opponent. But if 
his ultimate aim is the capture of the enemy's men and 
guns and territory, his best powers are kept constantly 
at work to meet new conditions. And what is true of the 
scientific man or the soldier is true of the business man 
or the student. Expectations do not constitute the sum 
of life; often, perhaps, they do not even represent the 
best that may befall. To wring success out of failure 
is both the doom and the glory of the real man. 



258 THE ART OF STUDY 



CHAPTER XXV. 

THE PETRIFIED WILLI HABITUAL MASTERY. 

The only valuable action is action that is persisted 
in. Nothing produces results of any value in science or 
study or business except following up the first results 
and securing the total cumulative effect of steady action. 
No general can win a campaign by merely winning a 
victory, unless he follows up the victory. A broad range 
of vision is of no value to the hunter who does not give 
steady pursuit. It is the after strokes that, outwardl}- 
at least, count for most. Contentment with the first 
fruits never wrought any good to either a soldier or a- 
scholar. 

Eecent history has furnished the world a remarkable 
example of a petrified national will. The Boer farmers 
first startled the world by the courage with which they 
faced tremendous odds and by their remarkable successes. 
But that first feeling of excitement over the semi-mirac- 
ulous gave way to chronic astonishment at the persist- 
ence with which the Boers held out against their enemies 
and apparently smashed all the doctrines of probability 
by sheer force of will. 

The only reason that can be given why the Boers 
did not yield at certain critical and apparently hopeless 



THE PETRIFIED WILL; HABITUAL MASTERY 259 

stages of the war is that they simply would not change 
their minds, and their enemies, who had done nearly 
everything else, could not change their minds for them. 
Stubbornness of will, even under the most distressing 
circumstances, has made their struggle stand out among 
the marvels of history. With most of their men and 
nearly all their women and children prisoners, with their 
initial resources exhausted, with but slight opportunities 
to replenish their necessities, their petrified will found a 
way in the wilderness to keep soul and body together, 
to evade the enemy, to puzzle the world and make a 
mighty people wish that they had waited for a friendly 
destiny to accomplish the conquest by peaceful means. 
The world may pity and puzzle ; but it was a case of un- 
limited resources against a petrified national will. 

It would be an easy matter to cite illustrious exam- 
ples of how eartVs great captains have conquered adverse 
conditions and scored a great though belated triumph 
simply because they would not yield. But we need not 
appeal to them. Fixity of purpose, a will that clings with 
teeth and claws, that calls into service every mental de- 
vice and power is essential to success in the hour of study 
as well as in the hour of battle, to the success of the bare- 
foot boy as well as to that of the warrior. 

The desire to have hold of a bull-frog is likely to 
be strong in every boy that has ever heard one sing. But 
not every boy gets his desire. A squad of boys may throw 
sticks and stones and roil the water of the pond. But, 
while they may all be gifted with equal powers of devising 



260 THE ART OF STUDY 

means to ends, they are not equally endowed with the 
tendency to cling to a purpose through failure. The de- 
sire for a bull-frog may be stronger in some than in 
others, but that does not determine who will stay longest 
at the pond. The boy who first suggested catching one 
may be the first to leave. They may all straggle home 
and leave behind the lad who at first felt the least de- 
sire for a bull-frog. He may not be impulsive or enthusi- 
astic; his feelings are slow in growing. But his will is 
like a steel trap ; it can shut, but it cannot open. 

All the efforts of the crowd have only made his task 
more hopeless; because the water is disturbed and so 
are the feelings of the frogs. They grasped the mean- 
ing of the situation quicker than the boys, and hid. But 
this boy has learned some important things; he knows 
now how not to catch a bull-frog. He seems to have no 
equipment left except the desire and the will, and failure 
for experience. But for him there is only one desire, 
and he has a will that never whiffles. That combination 
lays under tribute the highest and best thinking of which 
the mind is capable. 

When the sun has gone down and supper time is 
past; when the mud has settled to the bottom of the 
pond and the water is clear again; when the moon is up 
and the frogs are singing, that boy plods home. He is 
dirty, wet and hungry and has evil forebodings of what 
is in store. But there is a kicking bull-frog in his hand, 
and that is enough. He does not know what part the 
frog can play in appeasing the wrath to come, but he 



THE PETRIFIED WILL; HABITUAL MASTERY 261 

will offer him in evidence and yield him up in sacrifice. 
It is not the frog alone, but the triumph that bears him 
up and makes him think it was worth while. 

Of course, it may well be admitted that there is a 
limit to the exercise of a stubborn will. Will and wis- 
dom sometimes part company, and it becomes a nice 
question as to when to use discretion and quit. Person- 
ally, I have seen so much failure, due to lack of stubborn 
purpose, and have so carefully studied the failures and 
triumphs of students, that I prefer the stubborn will, 
even though it sometimes brings disaster. I am inclined 
to think that no disaster this side of death is irretriev- 
able; and such a will can use disaster to retrieve success. 

Brilliant scholars are always charming in a teacher's 
eyes ; but I think their value is mostly temporary. Brill- 
iant scholarship is no sign of coming success unless the 
character that possesses it is also endowed with great 
executive force, with a strong and finely tempered will 
that never breaks. But nature does not often make this 
combination. While one has a fine head, some other fel- 
low, with a somewhat duller head, may have the necessary 
streak of stubbornness and the 'power to act. And the lat- 
ter wins — not the prizes in school, but those of practical 
life, and, in the end, those of sound scholarship, too. 
All the "self-made'' men and women are endowed with 
powerful wills coupled with resourcefulness. They have 
used the usually moderate gifts of nature so effectively 
that they have outstripped and now outshine many 
brighter minds who had opportunity thrust upon them. 



262 THE ART OF STUDY 

I had two students under observation at the same 
time for two years. Both had had about the same oppor- 
tunities, but one was quick and the other slow. The one 
could learn a thing while the other was getting ready. 
But the genius never learned to overcome anything that 
he did not like. He never voluntarily removed an obstacle, 
but always sought to avoid it. Each year he encountered 
something that did not suit his taste. In things that 
he liked he was a master; from everything else he asked 
to be excused. 

Slow-In-The-Head was not master of anything. He 
had a clear mind, but had to work for everything he got. 
But he made a fight out of everything that he undertook. 
Pugnacity seemed to be a ruling trait with him. Th6 
first few weeks of his new school life looked to others 
like weeks of agony. But he never asked for a truce nor 
for time to catch his breath. When ^'brighter" students 
complained that they were driven with work, and he was 
asked his opinion of the matter, he only said, with a sug- 
gestive snap of his hard-set lower jaw, "I have no kick to 
make." 

Both entered college. The bright student went 
home in a few weeks, by invitation, because at college 
they did not drive students to things they did not like, 
and he would not drive himself. The other is a college 
man — an honor to himself and to everyone who helped 
him get an education. Moderate intellectual powers 
coupled with a dogged disposition to accomplish some- 



THE PETRIFIED WILL; HABITUAL MASTERY 263 

thing, with big fighting and small dodging powers, fur- 
nish the best material for a really solid character. 

A burning-glass in motion never set fire to anything. 
But even a lens of ice, held steady, will make a fire. 
There is little use to talk about training the attention, 
memory, and powers of observation, unless the will is 
trained to keep a strong and steady hold upon the move- 
ments of the intellectual life. And I believe that all men 
and women who are not mentally defective are capable 
of training their wills. A few are so strongly endowed 
by nature with the gift of habitual mastery that they 
seem to need no training. They are the born leaders. 
They throw all who come in contact with them at once 
into the subordinate attitude of helpers. But, while the 
world needs and uses these gifted leaders, the individual 
student is under obligation to learn to lead himself, to 
cultivate the spirit of habitual mastery, until prompt and 
effective action upon every subject and occasion becomes 
the normal individual trait. 

There is an unwritten law on the farm which says that 
the older brother mny drive the horses and that the younger 
brother shall jump off the wagon and open the gates and 
bars. Sometimes the younger brother is one of the gifted 
ones, and raises his head of dominion al)ove the rest of 
the family. But such occasional exceptions only prove 
the terrible strength of the law that one shall lead and 
the other follow. It is a law of brute as well as of human 
life— this law of leadership. When once it is accepted, 



264 THE ART OF STUDY 

disputes disappear, responsibility is concentrated, and 
more and better work is done. 

But what about the younger boy, who is handicapped 
by the fate of birth ? It is a small matter that he should 
have to forego the proud pleasure of driving the horses 
except when, in a spirit of benevolence, the older brother 
makes concessions. With the privilege of mastery goes 
the weight of responsibility. When there is hard work, 
the older brother has to do the hardest part of it. When 
there is perplexity or danger, he has to make the deci- 
sions, take the initiative and see that all goes well. He 
is the last to enter school in the fall and the first to leave 
it in the spring. His education, apparently, is sadly sac- 
rificed to the interests of the family. 

Nobody sees what has been done to the younger 
brother. When the leader leads, the others cease to 
think. This is not due to lack of capacity, but to lack 
of opportunity. Yielding the mastery to others, even 
though it may not breed personal weakness, makes the 
individual defenseless from lack of practice. This fact 
is not impressive until the leader is removed. Kill the 
leader and the herd of elk will mill ; and while it is wheel- 
ing round, the whole herd can be killed by a single man 
before another leader is developed. This is the interval 
of disaster — the time when the habit of following works 
havoc and reveals the greatness of the weakness. When 
the older brother is withdrawn the younger one tastes 
the bitter-sweets of leadership without training. 

The same truth holds good for nations. When the 



THE PETRIFIED WILL ; HABITUAL MASTERY 265 

Eomans withdrew from Britain, after four hundred years 
of mastery, the natives had lost the art of self-help, and 
were at the mercy of invaders. Their appeal for help 
was pitiful. They had lost capacity for initiative and 
leadership, and the development of it seemed out of the 
question. Many a nation has suffered terribly in war 
while it was going through the intermediate agony of 
developing real leaders. "There is always a man for the 
crisis" — proof of slumbering capacity repressed by fixed 
conditions. But the punishment that comes to the na- 
tion while it is training its leader is a fearful price to pay. 

It takes many years of harsh experience in later life 
for a younger brother to overcome the effect of the rela- 
tion that he bore in boyhood to a competent older brother. 
When he goes from home the spirit of dependence and 
hesitation follows him till he has learned how to exercise 
his judgment and will effectively. He may have more of 
the learning gained from books, but in the serious crises 
of life that confront them both, it is the older brother 
who sets his sound, cool judgment to work and enters 
upon steady and vigorous action that makes things come 
out right, while his younger and perhaps more gifted 
brother is hesitating. There is a vast difference between 
book-learning and personal power. 

The heaviest emphasis throughout this whole book 
has been on the necessity for cultivating clear and ac- 
curate thinking. A good memory and all the other de- 
sirable mental traits shall be added unto him that trains 
himself to clear and cautious thous^ht. That is the first 



266 THE ART OF STUDY 

requisite for an intellectual life. The second is like nnto 
it : habitual mastery, the power and chronic habit of carry- 
ing into execution the vigorous thought in spite of ob- 
stacles and so-called impossibilities. The will is the back- 
bone, of the character. If that is a cotton string, there 
may be ever so much capacity for absorbing knowledge, 
but no use will be made of it. 

There can be no hope of a well-regulated life, no 
assurance of habitual success, unless the will is trained 
to act regularly, steadily, vigorously, to act promptly and 
persistently upon a well-considered plan, and to brush 
difficulties aside as incidents subordinate to the main 
issue. 

This training must begin by acting out one's thought, 
even if the action seems ever so crippled at first. The 
power to do increases with the doing. In the silence of 
the years will grow up a character that feels the constant 
joy of accomplishment. The moral culture that comes 
from such training of the will can never be taken away. 
The man is never the same again after a period of con- 
stant, earnest, obstinate effort. Through the vista of 
the years he can see the growth of personal power, of 
whose development he may, at the time of its growth, 
have been entirely unaware. 

The object of all this exercise of will is to train it to 
act promptly and confidently, not merely in the pres- 
ence of oft-repeated difficulties, where habit will come to 
its aid; but to act in the same way when face to face 
with new, unusual difficulties. If one has the necessary 



THE PETRIFIED WILL; HABITUAL MASTERY 26T 

confidence and willingness within him to meet a great 
difficulty at a single impact, all after-action becomes 
easy. Shall a small boy plant his feet cautiously in the 
edge of the river, dip up a handful of water and wet his 
arms, "to get used to the cold," or shall he jump from 
the spring-board and go in head first, leaving no time- 
for the long-drawn-out agony of getting wet? Shall the 
will remove such difficulties piece-meal, and so develop 
the habit of shivering at the thought of action, or shall it, 
when the decision is made, brush aside the difficulties by 
shortening them? 

I like the story of young Fred Ouillette, "pilot and 
son of a pilot .... a hero to the boys of Montreal, a 
figure to be stared at always by anxious passengers.'^ 
Cleveland Moffett told it in St. Nicholas for April, 1901, 
and it has in it the secret of the making of a man, the 
explanation of how habitual mastery is made easy. 

In Canada, the land of pilots and hardy watermen, 
"there are not ten — perhaps not six — men to-day, French 
or English or Indian, who would dare the peril" of shoot- 
ing the Lachine Eapids at Montreal with a steamer-load 
of passengers. Fred Ouillette is one of the six. Moffett 
talked with him about it and tells what the pilot said. 

"He emphasized this, for instance, as essential in a 
man who would face that fury of waters with many lives 
in his keeping: he must not be afraid. One would say 
that the rapids feel where the mastery is, whether with 
them or with the pilot, and woe to him if pounding heart 
or wavering hand betray him. The rapids will have no 



268 THE ART OF STUDY 

mercy. And there are pilots, it appears, who know the 
Lachine Eapids, every foot of them, and could do Ouil- 
lette's work perfectly if Ouillette were standing near, yet 
would fail entirely if left alone. Every danger they can 
overcome but the one that lies in themselves. They 
•cannot brave their own fear. He cited the case of a 
pilot's son who had worked in the Lachine Rapids for 
years, helping his father, and learned the river as well 
as a man can know it. At the old man's death, this son 
announced that he would take his father's place, and 
shoot the rapids as they always had done; yet a season 
passed, then a second season, and always he postponed 
beginning, and, with one excuse or another, took his boats 
through the Lachine Canal, a safe but tame short cut, 
not likely to draw tourists. 

" ^Not start heem right, that f adder,' said Ouillette. 
^Now too late. Now nevair he can learn heem right.' 

" "^Why, how should he have started him ?' I asked. 

" ^Same way like my fadder start me.' And then, in 
his jerky Canadian speech, he explained how this was. 

^^Ouillette went back to his own young manhood, to 
the years when he, too, stood by his father's side and 
watched him take the big boats down. What a picture 
he drew in his queer, rugged phrases ! I could see the 
old pilot braced at the six-foot wheel, with three men 
in oilskins standing by to help him put her over, Fred 
one of the three. And it was ^Hip !' 'Bas !' 'Hip !' 'Bas !' 
('Up!' 'Down!' 'Up!' 'Down!') until the increasing roar 
of the cataract drowned all words, and then it v/as a jerk 



THE PETRIFIED WILL ; HABITUAL MASTERY 269^ 

of shoulders or head, this way or that, while the men 
strained at the spokes. Never once was the wheel at 
rest after they entered the rapids, but spinning, spinning- 
always, while the boat shot like a snake through black 
rocks and churning chasms. 

"They used to take the boats — as Ouillette takes 
them still — at Cornwall, sixty miles up the river, and,, 
before coming to Lachine, would shoot the swift Coteau 
Eapids, where many a life has gone, then the terrifying^ 
Cedar Eapids, which seem the most dangerous of all, and 
finall}^, the Split-rock Eapids, w^hich some say are the- 
most dangerous. And each year, as the season opened, 
Fred would ask his father to let him take the wheel some 
day when the river was high and the rocks well covered,. 
and the boat lightly laden, wishing thus to try the rapids 
under the easiest conditions. But his father would look 
at him and say : ^Do you know the river, my son ? Are 
you sure you know the river ? And Fred would answer : 
'Father, I think I do.^ For how could he be sure until 
he had stood the test? 

"So it went on from year to year, and Ouillette was 
almost despairing of a chance to show himself worthy of 
his father's teaching, when, suddenly, the chance came 
in a way never to be forgotten. It was late in the sum- 
mer, and the rapids, being low, were at their very worst, 
since the rocks were nearer the surface. Besides that, 
on this particular day they were carrying a heavy load,, 
and the wind was southeast, blowing hard — the very wind 
to make trouble at the bad places. They had shot. 



270 THE ART OF STUDY 

through all the rapids but the last, and were well below 
the Lachine bridge when the elder Ouillette asked the 
boy, ^My son, do you know the river?' 

"And Fred answered as usual, without any thought 
of what was coming next, Tather, I think I do/ 

"They were just at the danger-point now, and all 
the straining waters were sucking them down to the first 
plunge. 

" ^Then take her through,' said the old man, stepping 
hack; ^there is the wheel.' 

" ^My f adder he make terreble thing for me — too 
much terreble thing,' said Ouillette, shaking his head at 
the memory. 

"But he took her through somehow, half blinded by 
the swirl of water and the shock. At the wheel he stood, 
and with a touch of his father's hand now and then to 
help him, he brought the boat down safely. There was 
a kind of Spartan philosophy in the old man's action. 
His idea was that, could he once make his son face the 
worst of this business and come out unharmed, then never 
would the boy know fear again, for all the rest would 

be easier than what he had already done Fred 

Ouillette has been fearless in the rapids ever since." 

Courage and force of will can be made a habit as well 
as giving attention. Quality of action, like quality of 
thought, is the final test of manhood. A well-trained 
will, like a well-trained horse, never leaves a load where 
it found it. It neither hunts difficulties nor dodges them. 

There is one quality of the will that has not yet 



THE PETRIFIED WILL; HABITUAL MASTERY 271 

been mentioned. The universe goes on in rythmic pulses. 
Work and rest alternate. The mind that has learned to 
take a prompt and vice-like grip upon a task needs to 
learn to let entirely go of it at intervals. Some minds 
get into the state of one who has grasped the poles of a 
powerful electric battery. When once they take hold of 
a subject, they cannot let go again. Some fatal force 
holds them there. The child that h^as become so keyed 
up that it does not stop its play when tired, but goes on 
and on by sheer tension of the nerves, finally finds relief 
in collapse and a fit of crying. The statesman or busi- 
ness man who at night cannot let go of the problems that 
he handles by day, will pay the price with insomnia. His 
relief comes by collapse and prolonged, enforced, and 
unprofitable idleness. The student, too, who carries the 
thought of his work wherever he goes, who carries his 
text-books to a concert, who does not have regular periods 
of stress and relief, in whom there is no well-marked 
pulse of action and repose, governed by an efficient will, 
can never hope for the genuine pleasures that come of 
normal, healthy action of either mind or body. 



272 THE ART OF STUDY 



CHAPTER XXVI. 

THE FEELINGS. 

We have hitherto tried to answer the question, "How 
train the mental powers, and how carry thought into ac- 
tion?" In other words, we have dealt with method, but 
have said practically nothing about the material of life — 
the kind of thoughts it is best to think and the kind of 
action that constitutes a successful life. Now that the 
development of capacity has been discussed, the book 
might be closed. But the principles that have been laid 
down are just as applicable to the making of a first-class 
rascal as to the development of personal worth and up- 
rightness. I have some strong convictions about the rela- 
tive value of ability and character; and the rest of the 
book will be devoted to a discussion of the materials of 
life. 

Our feelings are our masters. It is not worth while 
here to raise the nice point as to which comes first — 
thought or feeling. All we need to accept now is the 
fact that thought and action and feeling all react on and 
influence one another. Feelings are produced by inward 
thought or outward influences, and they in turn start 
our thought and action. The outward life and the in- 
ward thought may be described, in a large sense, as a 



THE FEELINGS 273 

continuous effort to express the feelings. The feelings, 
the sentiments, lie close about the roots of conduct. 
Schiller quaintly put feeling in the foreground of human 
life when he said, "While philosophers are disputing about 
the government of the world, Hunger and Love are per- 
forming the task." Feeling is really the fundamental 
fact, and intellect and will are its servants. The culti- 
vation of the feelings is therefore at least as important 
as the cultivation of the other mental powers by means 
of which we gratify and give expression to them. 

If there is to be calmness of spirit and effectiveness 
in the conduct of life, there must be a standard of feeling. 
The question, at least with the serious student, is, shall 
his feelings be a succession of momentary passions and 
temporary enthusiasms, like the snapping and crackling 
and flashing of burning leaves and twigs, followed by dull 
and ashy reaction ? Or shall they be the deep and steady 
feelings that accompany deep-rooted principles of life, 
that never flare, but burn and smolder steadily beneath 
the surface, unnoticed by spectators, like the burning of 
the deep forest soil after the surface fire has rushed past 
and gone out? 

It has been found necessary repeatedly in the course 
of this book, to emphasize the contrast between minds 
swayed by the immediate temporary interests of the hour 
or the day and minds that are steadily dominated by per- 
manent interests. The one kind of life is an impulsive, 
unguided career. The other kind aims at definite, far- 
reaching results, and all the personal powers and all out- 



274 THE ART OF STUDY 

ward circumstances^ are forced to contribute toward the 
accomplishment of those definite ends. In the latter case 
there is likely to be a wholesale sacrifice of present temp- 
tations, pleasures, and successes, a rejection of immediate 
results in favor of others, more ideal and distant. Such 
choice of the more permanent interests of life and the 
sacrifice of temporary successes, usually has a profound 
effect on the feelings and results in a rapid development 
of character. 

It often happens, of course, that such a choice even, 
may be bad. Many men bend the energies of a lifetime 
and spend the hard-earned competence of a whole family 
to satisfy the spirit of revenge. Some great wrong, com- 
mitted by another, stirs into activity the fires of a ven- 
geance that never burns low till ruin lies like a black pall 
over the lives of both the aggressor and the aggrieved. 
The feelings of pride, doubt, revenge, malevolence and all 
their like may be as firmly intrenched in the life and 
govern its whole course as completely as humility, faith, 
forgiveness and benevolence. 

Selfishness and sympathy, meanness and justice, hate 
and love, do not rule a life together. One or another is 
likely to become permanent. In a mind governed by the 
nobler permanent interests there may be violent whirl- 
pools of feeling, due to constitutional defects or extraor- 
dinary combinations of exciting circumstances, but the 
current of feeling recovers itself and follows a steady 
course. If the choice is a good one, the spirit of self- 
control increases with every sacrifice that is made of a 



THE FEELINGS 275 

present pleasure to a future good. A great difference 
in qualit}' of character between a shiftless, impulsive^ in- 
consequent individual and one whose conduct is outlined 
for a lifetime is not only steadiness of purpose in the 
latter, but great steadiness of the feelings. 

N"ature will have the toll for the force that she ex- 
pends. Wild enthusiasm and the fierce flaring of passion 
must be atoned for by despondency and pain. If the pen- 
dulum is touched it will swing both ways. Many a 
thoughtful mother dreads to hear immoderate laughter 
accompany the play of her little brood, for she knows, 
as well as the philosopher knows what the pendulum will 
do, that pain and weeping follow close on its heels. The 
law of action and re-action is the law that governs the 
feelings, too. Mild alternations of the gay and the grave 
are pleasurable; the extremes cause the pain. 

But even the life of impulse, of feeling uncontrolled 
by the large and permanent hopes and beliefs of a life- 
time, is better than one in which feeling is present but 
leads to no action at all. It is possible to let the feel- 
ings play and be worked upon until action becomes prac- 
tically impossible. Chronic novel-readers often weep 
over fictitious woes of imaginary heroes and heroines, 
but have no feeling whatever stirred in them by actual 
want or suffering or the patient heroism of life. Feeling 
has so long failed to lead to action, that action is repug- 
nant; the life goes up in the smoke of ineffectiveness. 
Incompetence is characteristic of this type. The victim 
seeks the excitements of imaginary tragedy and comedy 



276 THE ART OF STUDY 

in order to create the feelings he desires. The feeling 
is the total reward; and the slavery is as hopeless and 
degrading as that of the morphine fiend who slinks into 
an alley or hallway to "take the shot" that re-awakens 
his dormant dreaming powers. 

The day-dreamer, too, is the hopeless victim of feel- 
ing that finds no expression in activity. He conjures np 
his rosy dreams again and again for the sake of the feel- 
ings that accompany them. And when once this habit 
has fixed itself upon him, there is less hope for him than 
for the dry bones in the valley of Ezekiel's vision. Noth- 
ing but the hard, unfeeling knocks of a relentless world 
can re-awaken a spirit, thus enthralled, to healthier sym- 
pathy for the real things of life. One who wants to make 
himself intellectually effective has to see to it that his 
feelings are not left to the control of pure imagination 
but that they shall be harnessed, as a working force, with 
his thinking and willing powers, into a team that shall 
deal directly with realities. 

But we need to return once more to the "impulsive 
life." It is not enough that the feelings shall spend 
themselves on real things, and lead to some sort of action. 
The chances always are, that action dictated by uncon- 
trolled impulse, will do more injury than good. A parent 
may ruin a child by a "quick succession of kicks and 
kindness," each of them dictated by the spontaneous feel- 
ing of the moment; while similar treatment, distributed 
with reference to the real deserts of the child instead of 
the impulses of the parent might do real good. 



THE FEELINGS 277 

The silly woman that carries flowers to a murderer's 
cell, and the insane mob that takes him from jail and 
hangs him, are very much alike. There is no balance- 
wheel of judgment, no steadying influence of clearly 
thought-out principles. Feelings hold ungoverned sway; 
and action follows directly upon impulse. The woman's 
lack of a large, correct view of life, the absence of the 
sense of justice to counterbalance sympathy, results in 
failure to pick out the one really entitled to sympathy. 

The mob is no better than the man it hangs. His 
perverse, ungoverned feelings spurred him to do murder, 
and theirs do likewise. Indignation over crime is a very 
creditable feeling and one that well becomes a decent 
citizen. But reverence for law and faith in the power of 
the community to deal with crime are absent in the mob; 
there is no counter-irritant for the wild feeling of indig- 
nation and it becomes ungovernable. Sensible action can 
result only from a steady interplay of feelings which 
modify and balance each other and give judgment an op- 
portunity to consider the merits of the case at issue. 
Civic responsibility is so greatly diluted in a republican 
commonwealth that there is not connected with it any 
permanent feeling powerful enough to lead the individual 
to steady action looking toward the improvement of ju- 
dicial methods. Instead of untying the Gordian knot, 
he cuts it. Instead of acting under the quieter desire for 
peace and order he gives way to a violent, barbaric feel- 
ing which leads him to do violence as bad as that he seeks 
to punish. 



278 THE ART OF STUDY 

A man may have very powerful feelings, and yet his 
conduct be noble and judicious. If violent feelings lead 
to violent action it is not alone because of the force of 
the feelings, but because other feelings that would easily 
counteract them have not been cultivated. A violent, 
unbroken colt can be managed in a team, if there is a 
steady, well-trained horse on the other side of the wagon- 
tongue. But in the absence of the steady horse there will 
surely be a runaway. So with the citizen. In quiet 
times he is indiiferent to the enforcement of the law, 
so he does not develop a feeling of reverence for it; and 
that is why, when the excitement comes, he is not himself 
a law-abiding citizen. There is feeling enough, but it is 
misplaced and unbalanced. 



SCIENCE CULTURE AND FEELING 279 



CHAPTEE XXVII. 

SCIENCE CULTURE AND FEELING. 

There is another phase of the subject of feeling that 
is of great interest to the student. He may become one 
of the class who devote themselves exclusively to one line 
of activity. The result of this concentration is usually 
the shrivelling of the greater number of the noble feelings 
that give life such pleasing variety. Monotony of inter- 
est results in monotony of feeling; and there is a tend- 
ency to one of two extremes. A single, great feeling de- 
velops in connection with the subject on which the mind 
is concentrated and overwhelms and unbalances the life, 
or all feeling dies out and the life is left cold and blood- 
less. 

I do not believe, as many people think, that deep and 
constant devotion to one line of thought necessarily tram- 
ples the power of feeling into the dust. The classical ex- 
ample of single hearted devotion to a great subject in the 
past generation has been Charles Darwin. In youth he 
loved music, but in later life lost all taste for it. He 
devoted a long life filled with physical suffering to the 
establishment of great scientific principles; and from his 
experience it has been argued that science blights the 
noble feelings that are fed by the fine arts. 



280 THE ART OF STUDY 

' But I believe the true explanation is that the love 
of music died in him, not because he devoted himself 
to scientific subjects, but because he did not attend to 
music. Pleasures die with the possessions that gave them 
birth. If the joys of life all flow from money, they dis- 
appear with its loss. The despair which results is due to 
the lack of other interests, which, if they were present 
in the mind, might still make life well worth living. 

Darwin is not the only man of science who has wit- 
nessed in himself the loss of some of the feelings that fill 
life with sunshine. Karl Von Baer, the father of em- 
bryology, a man of keen intellect, well-balanced powers 
and broad sympathies, susceptible to all the finer feelings 
of humanity, records of himself the same neglect of the 
brighter things of life and its effect on him. He went 
outside the walls of the town one day and found men 
harvesting in the fields. Then it dawned on him, that in 
his devotion to the infant science of embryology, he had 
not set foot outside the walls during the whole of spring 
and summer. The grain had been sown and the fields 
had turned first green, then golden, without his knowing 
or thinking about it. But he had been a country boy, 
and feeling for nature's beauty was not yet dead in him. 
He lay down and wept over what he had missed in life, 
and asked himself whether he was doing the best for him- 
self. The question came to him, whether it was worth 
while, for his own sake or that of the world, that he 
should stunt his life in order to find out a few more facts 
about the development of animals. Would not the world 



SCIENCE CULTURE AND FEELING 281 

find it all out sooner or later, even if he, the great loser, 
did a little less, if he did not sacrifice all the beauty and 
pleasure of life ? That day was a revelation to him. Be- 
fore Von Baer had worn out his life and lost the power 
to be a wholesome man, he abandoned his professorship 
and went back into the wide, heaving, breathing, feeling 
world and tasted the gifts of a rugged, vital life as an 
expert government explorer. 

Those who lose their lives in the loss of their higher 
sensibilities are themselves to blame. They devote their 
energies to a single subject and make no allowance for 
the rhythmic movement of work and pleasure, effort and 
repose, struggle and peace that normally controls the life 
of men and animals. Feeling must be freshened. Even 
the dull and hopeless laborer returns to his work in the 
morning with feelings different from those with which he 
left it the night before. His work has not changed; but 
it looks different to him because he has changed. He 
has rested and been about other things, and now it is 
a little new to him again. 

Feeling gives fertility to thought and a healthy glow 
to conduct. But constant devotion to a single subject 
never did anything but blast the wholesome feelings. 
This stripping the actual life of all feeling is usually 
done unconsciously and not with malice aforethought. 
But time works fatal changes in us that we are entirely 
unaware of. Neither science, nor any other one subject, 
can be both work and play for a soul that does not want 
to shrivel. In fact, the more deeply science digs, the 



282 THE ART OF STUDY 

more need for the light of a joyous life. Neither sci- 
ence nor art by itself can build a symmetrical life. 

Science, for example, can write an accurate defini- 
tion of a tree : "A perennial woody plant having a single, 
self-supporting stem or trunk, the whole being not less 
than twenty or twenty-five feet in height." This defini- 
tion is the result of much deep thought. But in order 
to make the definition, the beauty and grace and strength 
of individual trees all had to be eliminated. Who ever 
had a pulse of feeling beat within him from contem- 
plating such a definition ? A half -grown boy might suffer 
some feeling in connection with it: perplexity at not 
understanding it, or disgust at the necessity of attending 
to such an emaciated ghost of a thing. 

But he knows the difference between a shrub and a 
white birch tree, even if he cannot understand the defini- 
tion. That birch tree was made to try the souls of boys. 
Every shivering leaf, every rag of fluttering, papery bark 
is calling him with a living voice — no need of a definition 
here — to climb the single difficult stem to a height of 
more than twenty feet. If he is a real boy he will try 
to climb that tree. That is life welling forth from a 
fountain of feeling. The pale light of science is a poor 
substitute for the light of human sunshine. 

For the scientific man or student or business man 
who is under the constant temptation to concentrate his 
efforts closely and constantly upon one thing, the only safe 
course is the cultivation of numerous permanent interests 
that appeal to the higher sentiments. Frivolity and dis- 



SCIENCE CULTURE AND FEELING 283. 

sipation give relief from the mental tension due to long 
and intense application, but they leave no pleasant after- 
taste, no desirable effect upon the character. The sounds 
est pleasures are connected with the permanent interests 
of life. The relaxations of culture leave the mind and 
body fresh. They make all things look new. 

As we pass on through the thickets of experience, and 
growing knowledge ripens into wisdom, a silent but pro- 
found change is bound to come over all the sensibilities. 
What once roused anger or admiration, hope or courage,, 
no longer does so under the more penetrating gaze of a 
mature intellect. It no longer gives the satisfaction 
that it once gave. But while time subdues the feelings,, 
it is disastrous to have them aborted. A confidence that 
there is good in what has passed and more good in what is 
yet to come must pervade the mind of him who would 
ripen well in the autumn of life. A broad outlook upon 
life, sympathy for and insight into the work and wants- 
of others, in other fields of activity, are essential to the 
retention of sound feeling as life slips through the fin- 
gers. The greater the necessity one is under to concen- 
trate all his activity in one pursuit, the more essential it 
is that the sunshine and showers of right feeling should 
not be omitted; and they come only with the cultivation 
of the nobler interests of life. 

It may be true that sound judgment and broad cul- 
ture, while they widen the scope of the feelings, also- 
weaken them in some respects. Some of our most gen^ 
erous acts can be performed only while our general no- 



284 THE ART OF STUDY 

tions are immature. Two men walk down the same street. 
The first drops a nickel into every beggar's hat. He feels 
generous and acts promptly. Both he and the beggar 
have an immediate reward of pleasant feeling. But his 
acts have no lasting qualities, and neither do his feel- 
ings. His conduct will vary sadly even in different parts 
of the same day; and in time he may altogether lose his 
interest in the business of giving. He may suspect after 
a while that he has been helping rascals and turn ugly 
toward the begging business. 

The other man drops never a nickel in any beggar's 
hat. He may be just as deeply anxious to help a little 
in life's struggle, but he loses the passing pleasure be- 
cause he hnows too much. He is guided by broad prin- 
ciples of charity and realizes that such giving does more 
harm than good. He knows that charity organizations can 
care for all in real distress ; that some beggars get more by 
begging than other men do by honest labor ; that in giving 
promiscuously he would only be helping to blight the 
spirit of self-help. He may give ten times as much 
through charity organizations as the other man gives di- 
rectly ; but he seems to be at a great disadvantage. Look- 
ing, as he does, farther into the future, to the ultimate 
effects of his acts, he destroys the spectacular element 
of giving. His premeditation seems to destroy feeling. 

But in suppressing impulse and foregoing the little 
passing pleasures of self-sacrifice, he is laying the founda- 
tion of a life-long interest. As the fruit of his conduct 
ripens slowly, the pleasure in it, instead of being fitful. 



SCIENCE CULTURE AND FEELING 285 

is steady and increases as the years go by. There is 
abundant compensation of feeling to him who is willing 
to make it cluster round great interests. But it re- 
quires self-control and steadfastness of spirit. It is easier 
to take the present pleasure and let the future take care 
of itself. 

A poor man in New York city faithfully does a piece 
of work. When he seeks to collect the bill, he is abused 
and defrauded of his pay. What can he do? Might 
makes right. The amount is too small to justify legal 
proceedings, and he cannot afford to employ counsel; 
and in the end he would be beaten by the sheer process of 
wearing out. What can a true citizen do to help this 
case? He cannot afford to take up the legal struggle; 
and he cannot bear to leave the man helpless. By giving 
him the much needed money trouble is avoided, relief is 
given, and the feelings of sympathy are gratified. But all 
these effects are temporary. The permanent effects are 
as follows: 

One more rascal has been victorious and will regfard 
his policy as a successful one. One more poor man has 
been made to feel the twinge that goes with accepting 
what has not been earned — the loss of pride, the sting 
of beggary, the conviction that there is no justice on earth 
for the poor. One more philanthropist has added to his 
experience another element of gloom, re-enforced the 
feeling that might makes right — and received the thanks 
of a crest-fallen honest man. The total permanent effect 
is bad — on the loser, the winner and the giver. 



286 THE ART OF STUDY 

But there is another way, that appeals to other feel- 
ings and deals out justice as well as mercy. Jacob Kiis, 
who has shown how a noble life may be moulded with 
nothing but a clear head, a sound heart and willing hands, 
has described that other way. It is a "law hospital" that 
enforces the honest claims of defrauded poor men. The 
philanthropist can contribute toward its fi-ghting fund. 
The poor man gets his own, keeps his self-respect and 
carries away the feeling that justice is not blind to the 
rights of the poor ; the rascal pays his debt, suffers defeat, 
and is made to philosophize anew on the old adage that 
honesty is the best policy ; the philanthropist has a broader 
outlook, a postponed but deeper pleasure, and the feeling 
that he is an element in the mighty forces that are work- 
ing toward the realization of justice and righteousness — 
the highest ideals of the race. 

The principle that I have tried to bring out with 
illustrations drawn from the field of philanthropy holds 
true for all the phases of human activity. Quietness, 
dignity, lasting quality, can be given to the feelings only 
by setting up standards that will still be bearing fruit in 
ihe autumn of life. The sentiments of purity, truth, 
faith, benevolence, justice, are likely often to receive 
severe shocks, but if the individual is equipped with high 
ideals the sense of permanence and triumph will underlie 
feeling, thought and conduct. 



IDEALS 287 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 



IDEALS. 



Milton wrote to Hartlieb : "I call, therefore, a com- 
plete and generous education that which fits a man to 
perform justly, skillfully and magnanimously, all the of- 
fices, both public and private, of peace and war." That is 
a comprehensive definition of a good education. It in- 
cludes everything that can give strength and nobility to 
the individual — permanent courage, good citizenship, good 
morals, willingness to serve and suffer for the good of men 
and of the nation. Something more will be said here- 
after about the difference between ability and the pur- 
pose that is in the heart of a man; and it has been al- 
ready sufficiently emphasized that conduct is profoundly 
affected by keeping the thought centered on the higher 
and permanent interests of life. Our effective ideals 
can be read out of the conduct of our lives. All that 
we do is circumstantial evidence of what we think and 
believe. 

But ideals, to be effective, must receive some- 
thing more than mere acknowledgment that they 
are good. The old Scotchman's version of St. PauFs 
doctrine is: "What I would do, I couldna', and 



288 THE ART OF STUDY 

what I could do, I wouldna'." One can easily admit 
that justice, honesty, purity, truth, are good, and at the 
same time be unjust, dishonest, vile and false. If our 
ideals are to be of any value, the feelings must cluster 
closely round them. There must be not only assent to 
their value, but conviction that they are right for each 
particular individual, and that it is necessary to live them 
and uphold them. It is not so difficult a thing as it might 
appear, to acknowledge and believe one thing and do the 
opposite. Whether one shall really live up to his ideals 
depends on whether his feelings are under the control of 
those ideals. 

The planting of standards of living and belief, of 
righteousness, purity, truth, and all the better senti- 
ments, in the soil of the feelings is therefore a matter 
of deep concern. 'Now a fine sentiment, a noble ideal, 
cannot be implanted in a soul by an argument, no matter 
how logical. Ideals have to grow; and they grow slowly, 
like the woody fibre of a tree. They are, as it were, the 
permanent sediment of our thinking and acting; they are 
what is left to us after our separate experiences are over 
with. 

There has been no end of testimony to the effect that 
we grow, rather than allow ourselves to be argued, into 
the permanent states of mind which we call our working 
ideals. The best Christians are those who were born and 
brought up in Christian homes. Their moral fibre is 
made out of Christian ideals. There is no serious con- 
flict of motives, no terrible warfare of the feelings for 



IDEALS 289 

supremacy, because to such a mind there is almost only 
one possible view of life. 

Those who have the best control of their mother 
tongue, who are most sensitive to offenses against good 
literary taste and to the beauties of style are the men 
and women who grew up in an atmosphere of culture. 
They use good language as naturally as they eat their 
food. They do not know any better (or worse) than 
to speak and write well. The soundest excuse for what 
we do and the way we do it, is that we do it the way we 
learned it. Habit, the burden of the first chapter in the 
book, still has its heavy hand upon us here. "Train up 
a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he 
will not depart from it." In such a one there is perfect 
harmony among his ideals, feelings and actions ; and there 
is likely to be less need of repentance than among those 
who live part of their lives under the guidance of one 
set of ideals and the rest of it under another set. The 
circle of his thought is large, his sympathies are wide, 
the sense of duty strong, so that he throws off temporary 
evil easily — gloom, passion, hatred, pride — and steadily 
absorbs the good. This breadth and harmony of thought 
and feeling are the surest pledge of spiritual success. 
They fix in the life the feeling that "all is well." 

This all means, of course, that the best time to adopt 
ideals is in childhood, when we are least able to compre- 
hend them. Such a doctrine seems like an intellectual 
outrage. But it is just as well to yield our consent to 
it, because it is the principle on which human life is con- 



290 THE ART OF STUDY 

ducted. The acts of our childhood and youth are the 
most far-reaching acts of our lives. We choose our hus- 
bands and wives and our professions without the light of 
experience. All the most influential habits are fully 
developed while judgment is most immature. So, in 
spite of the gravity of the matter, it is hardly worth 
while to consider the doctrine that it is best to postpone 
the adoption of ideals until maturity and of professions 
until old age, for meanwhile we die. 

It is true of all our standards, that if they are to 
be the sure and safe guides of conduct, they must become 
woven into our inmost being; they must grow into the 
life instead of being driven into it, like a knife or a bullet, 
from the outside. They must represent not merely be- 
liefs that are acknowledged to be good, they must be 
modes of conduct. Childhood, youth, and the few first 
years of young manhood and womanhood are the only 
years in which either mind or body grow. The years will 
bring greater strength and riper judgment, but the face 
and form of the body are made for life, and so are the 
prospects of the spirit. 

Ideals can never be two-faced. In a normal life 
there cannot be one set of principles to guide by day and 
another to guide by night, one mode of life on duty and 
another on vacation. Neither is there any period in life 
when ideals can be laid aside or thrown to the winds, 
with the expectation that they can be calmly resumed at 
pleasure. There is a widespread belief that it does no 
serious permanent harm for a young man to make a 



IDEALS 291 

fool of himself for a few years; that the chances are 
always good that he will recover. This easy faith in 
Mother Nature's patience is badly misplaced. Human 
fathers and mothers are often more blissfully ignorant of 
the real lives that their sons and daughters are leading 
than any other people on earth. And even when they 
know a little of what is going on within and without, they 
condone the faults and feel sure that maturity will bring 
the youngsters back to their senses. But Mother Nature 
is neither blind nor ignorant; and she neither will nor 
needs to condone anything. She cripples or kills the fool, 
because she prefers the other kind and has plenty of in- 
dividuals to draw from. 

She neither teaches nor practices the doctrine that 
youth can throw the nobler sentiments to the winds and 
indulge the passions for a time and that afterwards the 
spirit may recover itself and grow into a desirable ma- 
turity. She knows that this doctrine is as false a guide 
as the will-o'-the-wisp on the dank, dark marsh. She 
provides no moral acids that will remove the stains and 
the stench of misconduct. 

A limb may die on a green tree, it may break off 
and even the knot may rot away. If the tree is young 
and vigorous the sore place may heal over with new wood 
and bark, so that nothing shows of the old defect. But 
there is a rotten hole inside. The flaw may never show 
again; but if the wind breaks that tree it will break at 
the rotten place. And anyway, the ax of the woodsman 
will reveal the written record when it lays the tree low. 



292 THE ART OF STUDY 

Somewhere and somehow every violation of the normal 
growth will tell its gruesome tale because it has made 
a scar, a constitutional weakness. 

To every one who succumbs in youth to physical, in- 
tellectual and moral folly, and sows wild oats, one of two 
things will happen in later life. After the period of un- 
wholesome living, he either will not, or he will adopt and 
struggle toward the realization of pure ideals. If he 
does not, he may still cease all gross misconduct because 
it is no longer worth while. He may pass for a decent 
citizen and do no injury to the morals of a younger 
generation by example. But the music of his life is full 
of the minor tones of moral discord. His attitude toward 
moral questions, the suggestiveness of his language, all 
point to the slimy record left inside. Thousands of such 
men and women are classed as decent citizens because 
they are outside of jail. But they are best kept away 
from, when it is possible to identify them. 

If after a period of folly there is a real revival or 
new growth of better sentiment, the case is one worthy 
of the most profound sympathy. The greater part of a 
really educated man's activity takes place inwardly. The 
better part of his life consists of reflection. This man 
never forgets. He would be willing to shed his blood for 
the privilege of washing out the memory of his evil deeds. 
The more sensitive he grows, the more he curses the day 
he went astray. He cannot get away from himself, and 
his very ideals become the judges that condemn his rec- 
ord. As Babbage has put it in that splendid old book, 



IDEALS 293 

the Ninth Bridgewater Treatise, "It is remarkable that 
those whom the world least accuses, accuse themselves the 
most, and that a foolish speech, which at the time of 
its utterance was unobserved as such by all who heard 
it, shall yet remain fixed in the memory of him who pro- 
nounced it, with a tenacity which he vainly seeks to com- 
municate to more agreeable subjects of reflection." The 
terrible after-taste of evil-doing is most sickening to him 
in whom the character has afterwards grown purest and 
noblest. Reminiscence is painful in proportion as the 
record is stained with misconduct; and the life that has 
gone through folly in youth and then recovered itself is 
doomed to permanent secret sadness. 

Youth cannot violate the laws of purity and upright- 
ness and expect old age to make it right. Repentance 
does not change the record. A part of the tree of life 
is sacrificed. If the feelings are early fettered to ideals 
of peace and purity, good-will, justice, uprightness and 
benevolence, and there is no shock or disturbance of their 
mutual growth there will be a life of deep and perma- 
nent tranquility beneath the superficial turbulence of cir- 
cumstances. That life will be a wholesome influence in 
the chaotic jostle of human struggle, full of hope and 
faith that truth will triumph and that all is well. 



294 THE ART OF STUDY 



CHAPTEE XXIX. 

SOME ELEMENTS OF CHARACTEE. 

The most consummate villain furnishes just as good 
material for the study of psychology as the noblest saint. 
It is in the practical use of the mental powers that char- 
acter is involved. All living nature is endowed with 
the fundamental desire to secure what is pleasant, but 
character, good character, for no other is relevant in this 
discussion, is built not upon what is pleasant, but upon 
a clear recognition of what is good, a complete accept- 
ance of it and a life whose acts are controlled by it. 

An anonymous poet has sung: 

"Sculptors of life are we, as we stand, 
With our lives uncarved before us; 
Waiting the hour when, at God's command. 
Our life dream passes o'er us. 
Let us carve it then on the yielding stone,^' 

The sentiment is good, but it does not give us full 
credit for our real condition. The sculptor, when the 
angel dream comes o'er him, can choose the finest marble 
in which to do his carving. His inspiration might burn 
very low if he were given no choice of materials and were 
told to take a block of coarse-grained granite or eveii 



SOME ELEMENTS OF CHARACTER 295 

a piece of bass-wood and give expression to his beautiful 
vision. When it comes to shaping character, we are 
placed here without choice of material or tools with which 
to carve a seemly life. Our mental powers and capacity 
for feeling are fore-ordained for us. The circumstances 
in which we shall find our ideals and give expression to 
them are not of our choosing. 

But we make the fatal mistake in losing courage and 
deciding to be nobody in particular because we think the 
marble of Pentelicus or Carrara is the only fit material 
for carving. A prisoner, when he craves to do some- 
thing, can make some wonderful things with nothing but 
a cracker-box for material and a common nail for a tool. 
One who craves to know the exact structure of an ani- 
mal, can make a better dissection with a toothpick and 
a common jack-knife than any other fellow can with an 
elegant set of tools. 

"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, 
But in ourselves, that we are underlings." 

It is not the poor materials and tools that were given 
us to work with, — the mediocre mental and physical gifts 
— that cause the real trouble. It is lack of desire and 
purpose to use what we have. Marble makes a good 
statue, but granite makes a good keystone. And here lies 
the real test of solid worth. Genius may do wonder- 
ful things, but it usually fits but ill into the solid masonry 
of life and is poor material from which to carve a char- 
acter. 



296 THE ART OF STUDY 

It is the poor use that is made of the gifts we have 
that causes all the trouble. A carpenter who "measures 
by guess and saws by guess" cannot hold his job one day. 
He does more harm than good. He wastes material and 
only gets in the way. A carpenter's wand is his foot- 
rule. With it he secures symmetry, proportion, accuracy, 
saves his time and his material, and turns out a satis- 
factory job. He has a standard to go by. He uses that 
same standard in all his ivork, everytvhere and alivays. A 
distinction is often drawn between the exact sciences and 
the merely descriptive sciences, much to the apparent 
discredit of the latter. And the distinction is based en- 
tirely on the fact that in the former, — ph5^sics, and the 
like, — it is possible to use exact standards of measure- 
ment to work with, while in botany, anthropology and 
some other sciences this has been hardly possible hitherto. 
Governments take the most extreme care to establish 
standards of weights and measures and to preserve as 
nearly as possible perfect models for purposes of com- 
parison. In business and in scholarship, confidence, se- 
curity, accuracy, permanent results, require fixed stand- 
ards of measurement, whether that standard is a good 
dollar, a foot-rule, a pound weight or a foot-pound. It 
does not require very long or very profound thought to 
realize that everywhere, standards of measurement are 
what make it possible to do business quickly and on a 
large scale, what enable men to know at every step the 
value of what has been done and what it is necessary to do 
next. I do not believe, with some people, that the ability 



SOME ELEMENTS OF CHARACTER 297 

to measure everything exactly constitutes perfect sci- 
ence or perfect business, but without this a high degree of 
civilization would be impossible. 

If it is so important that there should be true stand- 
ard pounds and yards in order that the pennies, in busi- 
ness life, shall always go into the right pocket, how can 
the thoughtful man or woman hope to judge the acts 
of others correctly or to check and guide properly his own 
performance, unless he has clearly thought-out standards 
of conduct to go by, standards that he uses always, on 
himself as well as others. The lack of well-established 
and fully accepted principles of conduct is what causes 
ns to be at one moment on one side of an important 
question and the next moment on the other side. We do 
a thing confidently and afterwards seriously question the 
value or propriety of the act, or do something diametri- 
cally opposed to it because there is no constant, guiding 
principle. We fail to approve our own acts so often be- 
cause they are fastened to no anchor chain of principle. 

But neither the standards of measurement in science 
and business nor the standards of conduct used in the 
building of the individual character are determined upon 
and fixed by an hour^s reflection and an arbitrary, off-hand 
decision. They are the slow and painful work of years. 
The carpenter^s feeling toward his foot-rule, his appre- 
ciation of its value, did not arise from his merely being 
told that it is a unit of measurement, but from practice 
in the use of it. One can get along very well without 
a pocket-knife; the feeling that it is indispensable has 



298 THE ART OF STUDY 

come from its constant use. So of ideals, beliefs and 
sentiments. They come to be established in the mind, 
come to flourish and to be consistently acted upon only 
as their worth is recognized in practice. 

It is not enough, either, to expect these things to 
be effective in life unless the measuring rods of principle 
are used in silent thinking as well as in noisy action. 
The beauties of nature are made possible only by the 
silent and weariless processes that precede them. They 
are the audible and visible evidence that mighty work 
has been done in silence. There could be no rush and 
roar and gleam of many waters if the powers of the sun 
had not first silently lifted the invisible mists into the 
sky and the waters had not first gathered silently under- 
ground. And so it is only when the strong and silent 
processes of the mind meditate upon, approve, and apply 
the measuring rods of the moral life to the passing events 
that character becomes a working force. 

Much is said about the good man and the good citizen. 
But the goodness of most men is negative. They do 
not violate the moral and statute laws of the community; 
they are good because they keep out of jail. But what 
active force of character does the average citizen wield? 
What is his real influence in the formation of public 
opinion, in the cultivation of powerful sentiment against 
wrong and in favor of right ? How powerful is the sway 
of the average good citizen over the thoughts and feelings 
of his own family? He accepts sound principles readily 



SOME ELEMENTS OF CHARACTER 299* 

enough, but does not enforce them either in his own 
private or public life. 

In an American city of twenty-five thousand people,, 
blessed with beauty of location and splendid commercial 
opportunities, a city in which the "moral element" could 
in twenty-four hours clean out the Augean stables of 
political and social filth, a minister of the gospel stood up- 
in his pulpit not long ago and told the men of his con^ 
gregation, who ranked among the "best and most influ- 
ential people" of the place, that so far as the public wel- 
fare was concerned, a thousand of them and their like 
could leave town and they would never be missed. He- 
told them a sad truth. They were negatively good 
enough, but they lacked potential. Those same men 
could be excited on occasion. They might even help to 
hang a vile criminal; but there is no thoughtful connec- 
tion between the views they hold and their private and 
public lives. There is no driving force of a vital sense of 
duty. 

It is not enough for the world to know what a man 
can do; it is important to know what he will do. A 
body of water at the top of a hill has potential; if it 
is turned loose it will do work. At the bottom of a 
hill it is nothing but a mosquito pond. It is a condi- 
tion of moral preparedness, of delicate hair-trigger ad- 
justment to the calls of duty that constitutes a wholesome, 
effective character. It is potential manhood and woman- 
hood that counts. What will he do under certain condi- 
tions? The whole community may be sure that a man 



:300 THE ART OF STUDY 

will be law-abiding, but the question is, will his moral 
character ?(;or^f Is it aggressive ? 

The great confidence that some men inspire is due 
to the fact that their characters are positive. They leave 
the impression of boundless integrity. Their honesty is 
^energetic. They are the captains of finance who are en- 
trusted with the wealth of others; the lawyers that are 
-given control of the vital interests of many men and 
women. Their integrity is not a variable quantity; they 
are not honest in great things and pettifoggers in smaller 
ones. They are actively true to whatever calls for their 
loyalty. 

It may seem like a far cry from a great lawyer to a 
plodding student. In the former case we note the power 
that he wields because of his integrity. At the student's 
stage of life integrity brings no rewards of money and 
power. It would seem that it must be its own reward. 
IBut quantity of results in the end depends on quality of 
results at the outset. The liar and thief in school will 
"be a liar and thief in practical life. He may condone 
Tiis acts by belittling their importance, but the point of 
ihe business comes out in another place. The writer en- 
tertains the hope that he has succeeded, in this book, in 
emphasizing the fact that, in order to secure the most 
valuable results of any kind, in the intellectual life, there 
must never, under any circumstances, be any deviation from 
the correct method, when that is once recognized. And 
i;his is far more vitally true of the moral than of the 
purely intellectual phases of the student's life. 



SOME ELEMENTS OF CHARACTER 301 

In nothing that the student does will he do his best 
unless he does it honestly. It will not serve him well, 
nor bear the scrutiny of others until it is permeated with 
the moral force of boundless integrity. If he will look 
after its quality, the quantity will be taken care of hj 
time. What he needs is to have the right conception 
and a deathless purpose to realize it in action. Ease, fa- 
cility, speed, all the elements of permanent satisfaction 
in any line of work or conduct, all result from right con- 
ception and purpose. They can no more be retarded or 
shut out than the falling rain drops can be persuaded to 
stay in the sky when the vapors have condensed. 

While we are dealing with the matter of integrity, 
it may as well be pointed out that the student is often ex- 
posed to conditions that are anything but uplifting. The- 
school and college world is startled every now and then 
into a discussion of the evils of students' cheating; and 
much resonant praise is given to the "honor system,^' 
wherein every student is given free rein to cheat or be- 
honest, as he chooses. This system relieves some people- 
from the performance of moral duty, but does not improve- 
matters. It is safer to trust a bull-dog with a pet kitten 
than to put a thief on his honor. The system gives the- 
thief free rein to do as he pleases and puts the honest 
student at a disadvantage. 

The honest student's attitude on this question is im- 
portant. He does not accuse his neighbors of treating 
him like a thief because they lock their doors at night.- 
He does not fly into a passion when he sees a policema» 



302 THE ART OF STUDY 

on the corner. He would think his neighbor foolish for 
not locking his door; and is inclined to be thankful that 
"there are policemen. Both create a comfortable atmos- 
phere for the honest man, by making life hard for the 
thief. And when the school or college teacher makes 
provision against dishonesty he should have the energetic 
support of every honest student. The individual student 
is morally responsible for the sentiment that exists in 
school or college. It is a fact that "men are not made 
honest by legislation." Legislation is for the protection 
of those who are honest. Those who have in them the 
promise of honesty and uprightness are entitled to the 
protection of so-called moral legislation. It is the stu- 
dent^s business to help make honesty the normal spirit of 
•conduct. 

N'o man or woman can be honest in some respects 
■and dishonest in others. There sometimes seems to be 
■such a contradictory state, but such people turn honesty 
into a commercial commodity. He who cheats in school, 
does not cheat and steal horses out of school because it 
would be unprofitable. He is an opportunist; he cheats 
when it is profitable and is honest when that is profitable. 
He makes merchandise of moral principles. 

Uprightness of character is based on something more 
fundamental than particular cases of honesty. It is con- 
stant moral motive that keeps the life in perfect peace 
tind guides conduct safely through the tangles of expe- 
xience. 

A young American in these days is trained to do 



SOME ELEMENTS OF CHARACTER 303 

mostly what seemeth good in his own eyes. Independence 
of judgment and conduct is more characteristic of us than 
of any other people on earth. But that fact carries with 
it a terrible responsibility. The attitude of mind which 
the student makes habitual during his school and col- 
lege days will be his attitude through life. If, with so 
great liberty of thought and action, there does not go a 
spirit of voluntary obedience to authority, of hearty ac- 
quiescence in sound moral principles and a desire to 
make them effective in life while in school, the mature 
man will find himself in a state of chronic mental rebellion 
against the best standards of his community, and will be 
an undesirable citizen. One who has so great liberty of 
thought and action needs to be deeply imbued with the 
doctrine formulated by Huxley, that we have only one 
clear, inviolable right, and that is the right to behave. 
The spirit of resistance to written or unwritten obliga- 
tions while in school makes men and women who are in 
later life untrustworthy. It is a matter of grave impor- 
tance to the development of character to learn to yield 
voluntarily in judgment to the decisions of superiors. In 
after years we learn that the judgment of our elders, based 
on long and wide experience, has no counterpart in the 
minds of the young men and women who are just begin- 
ning to try their powers on the complicated factors of 
life. 

One may think lightly of the minor matters of the 
irresponsible period of school life, but unless the indi- 
vidual is guided in his minor as well as in his major acts 



304 THE ART OF STUDY 

by sound principles he will surely develop the moral slov- 
enliness characteristic of so many men and women. One 
may have the smallpox and still live and be healthy, but 
the pits remain. The photographer may tell one more 
lie by removing the pits from the negative of your picture, 
but he cannot remove them from your face. It is that 
dreaded moral slovenliness, disregard for truth and honor 
and virtue, without being actually criminal in the eyes 
of the statute law, that makes the opinions of so many 
men and women two-faced, their influence negative, their 
lives so soggy, so unmusical. If character is to have ring- 
ing quality it must be made of the bell-metal of sound 
principles, and the casting must be attended to with care, 
from start to finish. Any flaw will spoil the music. 



CONCLUSION 305 



CHAPTEE XXX. 

CONCLUSION. 

Xothing has been said in this book about what a stu- 
dent ought to study. There has been a generation of end- 
less discussion on this subject by the teachers, and it 
will doubtless continue to be talked about for a long time 
to come. What we are interested in now is the method 
and the spirit in which a student approaches and does his 
work. 

The trouble with the masses, even of educated men 
and women, is that they content themselves with a moun- 
tain of memory and a pinch of reason. They accept the 
thought of others in prepared packages and take it into 
their systems without assimilating it. They are heavily 
weighted with well organized knowledge and noble ideals 
that have no real bearing or effect on their lives, because 
they were accepted without exhaustive thinking. That 
is why it is so exasperatingly true that in great crises 
most people throw their beliefs to the winds and act upon 
the powerful feelings that happen to be roused at the 
moment. Thoreau became acquainted with a wood-chop- 
per in the winter snows at Walden pond, and said of him, 
"I occasionally observed that he was thinking for himself 
and expressing his own opinion, a phenomenon so rare 



306 THE ART OF STUDY 

that I would any day walk ten miles to observe it." The 
danger to students, as to others, is, that they will approve 
of a statement of fact or principle and handle it suffi- 
ciently to remember it without forcing it into service, 
and making it prove its worth in practice. 

Ignorance is no bar to great intellectual power; but 
carelessness will ruin the finest work of the greatest 
genius. And power alone will not yield results unless it 
is yoked with patience. Desire alone is a sickly compan- 
ion to a student unless he cultivates alongside it the fight- 
ing qualities that make acquisition necessary and habitual. 

When a piece of work is done one may feel relieved 
at the thought that it is over with. So much the ox is 
capable of. When the yoke is taken off he rubs his neck 
against a post, and lies down with a long snoof of relief. 
But any human workman that is worthy of the name will 
experience at least a modest thrill of satisfaction that he 
has accomplished something, that he has triumphed over 
conditions that lay before him. 

But there is an attitude of mind toward work before 
as well as after it is done. The contemplation of any 
kind of task may be habitually sickening; the student 
may creep to his work when goaded by time and stern 
necessity, keeping his eyes carefully averted from its at- 
tractive features. Or the thought of coming effort may 
make the blood mount and the spirit rise, and the powers 
assert themselves. He need not, at the scent of what is 
coming, paw in the valley and mock at fear, like the war- 
horse in the book of Job, nor swallow the ground with 



CONCLUSION 307 

fierceness and rage, and smell the battle afar off. But if 
the thought of coming struggle does not rouse in him 
the best qualities of a vigorous manhood and inspire some- 
thing of the feeling of joy that comes of action, there will 
be no pleasure in the work itself nor satisfaction in the 
results. 

Anticipation can do its best service and give the rosy- 
glow of real beauty to one's life only if it is kept fixed on 
the common affairs that are directly ahead. It is the 
working at one thing and letting thought and anticipa- 
tion dwell on other things — the picnic things of life — 
that lends dull monotony to study, that makes student 
and workman so unreliable, so loath to begin and so ready 
to quit. The concentration of all the feelings upon the 
work in hand is what produces the moral energy that bat- 
ters down difficulties. Keen attention makes the driest 
subject interesting. Vigorous effort is bound to produce 
buoyant feeling. No matter how slow-minded a student 
may be, if he keeps his head clear by active thinking and 
his powers at work by a strong will, he is bound to de- 
velop a solid and masterful personality. 

'Not genius, but the willingness to struggle and the 
undying hope of success are the qualities best suited to 
the development of strong manhood and womanhood. It 
is not in having but in getting that the pleasure of life 
is found. Nature's first commandment in the decalogue 
of success is, "Create your own environment." Accurate 
thinking and a powerful will are developed only in the 
mill of life. Self-command, rightly directed power. 



308 THE ART OF STUDY 

sound judgment and right ideals are not given to heaven- 
born genius; they come to life in the dust and sweat of 
a steady struggle. 

It is not so much what a man works at as the way in 
which he does it that is the key to inward approval and 
outward success. There is charm and some peace and 
happiness in any set of conditions that is dattled with. 
Sit down and wish you were endowed with better powers 
and given better opportunities, and anything you touch 
will be "an asinine feast of sow-thistles and brambles." 
But no matter how heavy the handicap of circumstance, 
nor how dense the initial ignorance, nor how apparently 
weak the untrained powers may be, show a spirit of ha- 
bitual mastery, and I will, in the words of Milton, 
"straight conduct you to a hillside, where I will point you 
out the right path of a virtuous and noble education; la- 
borious, indeed, at the first ascent, but else so smooth, so 
green, so full of goodly prospect, and melodious sounds 
on every side, that the harp of Orpheus was not more 
charming.'' 

It is not unusual brain power that makes the best 
student, but a combination of strong motive and strong 
will, and patient, steady action. What Huxley said of 
scientific men will always be true of the student. "Truth 
has yielded herself rather to their patience, their love, 
their single-heartedness, and their self-denial, than to 
their logical acumen." 

Eealization never comes true to our expectations. We 
look for the higher, but seem to grasp only the lower and 



CONCLUSION 309 

lesser good. By middle life we find ourselves where the 
fondest and wildest imaginings of our youth never car- 
ried us. But power is cumulative, whichever way we 
move. Action makes action easier. Nature's interest is 
always compound, both for reward and punishment. The 
dull movement of a student's routine life seems to leave 
no visible trace, but Time takes care of the single blows 
that are given, if only they are true and strong. The 
hour-hand of fate not only points, but moves. The silent 
years make clear the knowledge that was dim, and strong 
and accurate the powers whose existence was hardly recog- 
nized. 



I^vi^. 



2.6 



l%<i^ 



UG. 25 1902 
1 COPY DEL. TOCAT.OIV. 
AUG. 26 1902 



